This is why I love what I do. When I photograph a wedding, I give the couple the gift of the moments they might have missed. I give them the gift of reliving and remembering their day. I give them the gift of preserving, in a tangible printed album, their story.
Here is our story:
April 17, 2012 was a Tuesday, and a really odd and inconvenient night for my good friend, Ed, to have a birthday party, but I love Ed, and hadn't seen him in months, so I tore myself away from writing training plans for the athletes I was coaching, and went off to drop in for "an hour or so" at his party.
Across the potomac in NW DC, Jeff was having similar thoughts, and boarded a metro train into Alexandria to celebrate for "a little while" with Ed.
Knowing that I was a long course triathlete and Jeff was an ultra-distance cyclist, Ed introduced us, and the two of us talkative extroverts spent the next three hours deep in conversation. . . We met up for Thai food a week and a half later, and we shut the restaurant down with another long conversation. A hike, a bike ride, a movie, and it was clear to both of us that this was something. . . A trip to Colorado together, and we were both pretty sure that this was a permanent partnership.
We moved in together fast, just 3 months after that birthday party, but we're not 25. We know who we are, and we know what we want.
June 1, 2013, and Jeff gave me a ring, with gorgeous amethysts in a white gold setting, because I like purple more than I like diamonds, and he knows me. On top of Grandfather Mountain at sunset, I agreed to be his wife.
April 18, 2014, after nearly a week in a quiet mountain cabin at the foot of Grandfather Mountain, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, we woke on our wedding day!
I made a big breakfast, anticipating that we probably wouldn't get lunch, and we sipped mimosas while waiting for our friend and photographer, Stephen de Leon, to get there.
We planned a low key day, small and intimate with immediate family and only our very closest of friends. The venue was McRae's Meadow at Grandfather Mountain. The dress was purple with white polka dots, from Mod Cloth, ordered online from my phone while Jeff and I were having a wedding planning meeting over black IPAs and reubens at one of our local bars, The Star and Shamrock. How many brides can say that they bought their dress in a bar?
My bouquet was yellow roses that I bought the night before the wedding from Food Lion for $12.99, and wrapped in ribbon I had found at Michael's before leaving for North Carolina.
As you might have expected, photography was the SECOND most important purchase of the day, behind only the license to wed, of course! Stephen is a well respected colleague of mine, and I trusted him to make amazing images of the day, because, really, what's left of the day after the sun sets and the guests go home? The marriage, and the photos. It's one investment that you'll never regret spending the big bucks on, because unlike the flowers, lighting, music, food, etcetera, the photography, good or bad, lasts a lifetime.
He captured the details of our day beautifully, using the cabin's lovely fireplace and deck view as perfect accents.
We designed the shoes ourselves direct from Converse, because I do not do uncomfortable shoes!
Our wedding bands are from The Jewelry Vault in Timberville, Virginia. They did a great job of bending my band to match the curve of my engagement ring!
My Wedding jewelry was a Christmas gift from Jeff! He found it at the Library of Congress gift shop near his office here in Washington, DC!
Jeff's tie is a one of a kind, hand painted silk, by our friend and textile artisan, Norma Colman, of Studio Three 17, and Fibergig. We are lucky to be surrounded by such talented and generous people!
We dressed in our purple wedding outfits, which ended up being PERFECT in spite of Jeff having to get a brand new shirt two days before, due to forgetting the original shirt at home! Thank goodness it was just a shirt and not something important like a social security card!
After getting dressed, Stephen and his second shooter/lighting assistant, Ellen Gwin, used the cabin's 50+ mile view off the deck as a backdrop for our first wedding portraits.
Stephen said that shooting another professional wedding photographer's wedding was easier than normal, because I planned the entire day around the position of the sun, but harder than normal, because he knows that I have a more discriminating eye! Even though I trusted him implicitly, he let us peek at the back of the camera a lot throughout the day!
After leaving the cabin, heading for the top of Grandfather to get some portraits at the site of our engagement, and with the famous Mile High Swinging Bridge, we stopped at a roadside pull off to get some shots with a small waterfall, and some graffiti covered rocks.
I'm tellin' ya. . . It's all about comfortable shoes!
When we reached the top of the mountain, it was SIGNIFICANTLY chillier and windier than it was at the bottom! One nice thing about usually being behind the camera is that nobody cares what I look like, so I can wear all of the layers I need! This was harder! I had to look comfortable and happy in my sundress! EEK! I think I did a pretty good job though!
In the nothing goes perfectly on your wedding day department, we got stopped in a paving roadblock on the way down the mountain with our families waiting in the meadow, and we had zero cell phone signal to let them know that we were on the way! At least that gave me a chance to scroll through all of the photos on the back of Stephen's camera!
Once we were in the meadow, Stephen got right down to business on the family and group shots, and I put on my sweater! We were done really quickly with great results!
With our parents:
With Jeff's parents:
With my family:
With our nieces and nephews:
With Jeff's family:
Jeff and his parents:
Jeff and his parents, brother and sister:
Jeff and his siblings:
With my mom and sister:
With my mom:
With my sister:
With my best friend since we were 5 years old!
With my best friend and her husband:
With Reverend ED:
With everyone:
Then it was time! My best friend of 32 years shoved some hand warmers in my dress pockets, and Jeff and I waited together behind the rocks for our signal, Chris Purkea's cover of Nicole Reynolds' Like a Movie. We walked into the little grove of trees together, holding hands, and faced our families.
Bringing things full circle, our friend who introduced us, Ed, officiated like a champ, telling the story of how we met, and reminding us that "routine maintenance" is the key to keeping all of our relationships strong and happy!
We asked that personal cameras and phones be stowed away during the ceremony, allowing our family to be present in the moment with us, and allowing Stephen to capture their expressions without the interference of everyone holding a camera or phone in front of their faces! I have to admit that I was nervous about asking for this, because we have several people who are talented hobbiest photographers in the family, but everyone was happy to abide by our request, and happy to get to really attend the wedding!
I lit a candle for my dad, who passed away in 1999, and Eileen, my best friend from kindergarten through the present, did a reading from Madeline l'Engle's The Irrational Season.
Both of us being big fans of craft beer, we created a "beer unity ritual" where we poured half of a Breckenridge Vanilla Porter and half of a Lancaster Strawberry Wheat beer into a glass together, and shared the resulting contents (hint: It's like strawberry shortcake in a glass!).
We wrote a little piece about how the beers are significant and about what they represent.
We also put together a wine box ceremony, where we locked letters to each other and a bottle of one of our favorite wines into a personalized wooden box from Mossy Holler that we will open on our 5th anniversary! It will be nice to share a bottle of Sugarloaf Winery Comus and read what we wrote to each other between breakfast and getting ready on the morning of our wedding day!
We wrote our own vows, and I threw in a surprise for Jeff by going off script and "Rick Rolling" him with the lyrics to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up while Eileen cued up the music. After the gotcha moment, it was easy, for both of us, to get choked up on the real vows.
We exchanged rings, comparing them to bicycle wheels, pledging to each other "all of my miles. Through route changes and weather delays, on the fast flats, the steep climbs, and the exhilarating descents, I will be by your side."
With that, Ed declared, "by the power vested in him by the magic of the internet and the trust of the state of North Carolina" that we were husband and wife! We kissed, and walked out of the grove of trees to The Eels' Fresh Feeling.
We took a few minutes to hang out with everyone, finish the beer, and grab a couple more portraits before piling in cars to go to dinner!
We celebrated with dinner at The Best Cellar in Blowing Rock and cake from Stick Boy Bakery in Boone. Our bicycle cake topper is from Peachwik.
We finished out our vacation by seeing the sights with our families and friends and enjoyed a casual party with indoor bocce and DC Brau beer the next weekend back in our NE DC neighborhood at Vendetta, with 8 different pies from Dangerously Delicious Pies!
Yes. Beautifully preserving a couple's memories is why I love what I do, and having my own precious memories preserved so beautifully is why I value professional photography so highly.
Stay tuned for my photos from a recent wedding in Arlington, Virginia, engagements, some more professional headshots all coming soon, and our RAGBRAI honeymoon coming in July!
All Photos ©2014 Stephen de Leon, Stephen de Leon Photography
All text ©2014 Jen Magnuson, Magnuson Photographic
Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.
