Our day started out at Branches Massage & Spa in Effingham for Rachel’s hair/makeup. The day was perfect too! Leading up to this Saturday, the prediction for rain was around 60% until Friday night, then it was 0%! I love when it works out this way. Last time I photographed Tyler and Rachel was the night of their proposal. I absolutely loved this time with them, they are such a fun and sweet couple, so we were definitely looking forward to their wedding day. After prep time at Rachel’s home we made our way to the Carriage House Event Center in Altamont, pretty much in our backyard! The ceremony and reception were to be held here so we finished up prep time with Tyler’s prep. This had to be one of the funniest groom preps we’ve ever witnessed. Tyler got a bow tie for their wedding, and did not practice tying it up prior to the day. For anyone who has ever tried tying a bow tie or watched someone knows that it’s definitely an acquired skill. After four or five youtube videos of how to tie a bow tie, 30 minutes, and numerous attempts, they finally got it tied. You would have thought they won the gold medal in a competitive event in the olympics (see that? Olympic reference because it’s olympic season! 🙂 ) by the way they cheered after completing the tie.
However, this time was slotted to last about 15 minutes because we were to go to Ballard Nature Center for outdoor pictures. It didn’t put us too far behind, but you know how it is, on days like wedding days, one minute feels like an eternity, so running 10 minutes behind can make you feel as if the ceremony was to be over already. Fortunately, even though we were slightly behind, outdoor pictures went by smoothly. They had a great wedding party to work with and of course Tyler and Rachel were fantastic to work with. After outdoor pictures, we ended up at about 20 minutes ahead of schedule before we had to do family formals and then of course the ceremony. The ceremony was absolutely wonderful and was a joy to photograph. Guests were seated in rows in middle of the reception hall. As soon as the ceremony ended, we went outside for a balloon release and this gave the staff at Carriage House time to set everything up. They moved quick too! Because it was so warm outside, guests wanted to get back inside as quickly as possible, and what seemed like a few short minutes of doing the balloon release exit and entering back into the reception hall, the look had changed from a wedding ceremony to reception! Of course, the reception was equally as great! Everything went smoothly and the dance floor was packed the entire time! As a photographer, we LOVE packed dance floors. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I’ve been shooting in a way to capture the movement of dancing in my pictures by dragging my shutter, to expand on that, something I’ve been doing lately is getting in middle of the dance floor for pictures. Sure, this usually means I take a few elbows, get bumped into by someone jumping around, risk someone spilling their drink on me, but the pictures from doing this are SO much fun. They are truly candid and capture not only the movement of the dance but the emotion too! So much is happening as a group is dancing and by getting my camera in the middle of all of them, I’m able to capture so much to the story of the wedding day.
