What a month!

Have you ever had one of those times where you were so busy doing other things that you hardly got anything done that you might have done had you not been so busy. Yep, if you got that, you know what my August has been like.

Earlier this year my youngest son Tom trekked down to Chattanooga TN to propose to his girlfriend of three and a half years. That was in May. Samantha was working as a signer in a school system and could not move until the end of the school year. It was announced that the 20th of August would be the day. This took all those wedding planning guides and threw them out the window. No more 18 months before, 12 months before, or even 6 months before. Not only was there going to be an aggressive planning schedule, two other dynamics of this joyous moment were present. First the day is my wife's birthday and second, they asked if I would want to do the photography. 

 Engagement photos.

Of course I was honored to do the photography but also hesitant at the same time. I had to find out if it would be alright with my wife as I would miss sitting next to her experiencing the joy together. Did I want to work that hard on a day that I should be relaxed and enjoy the moment. After all, it would be my first solo wedding. All things considered, the answer was yes. Even though I knew I was jumping right into the middle of the fire.

One of the benefits of this decision was being able to work closely with Samantha though the summer and almost everyday of my vacation in August (so much for the Harley ride). She has really become my daughter, not just daughter-in-law. I did not realize that I would become one of the goto people on the day of the wedding but I had a lot of fun shooting all the preparation shots from nails to hair.

The plan was to shoot the bride with the wedding party and then the groom with the wedding party while they would not see each other until the alter. This is where the schedule started going south. We had to shuttle between two different towns which took more time than expected. The timeline started to go long to the point that the chairs were not at the park thirty minutes before the service. The first thing that went was the pre-cerimony shoot and some of the decorations at the cerimony. The chairs showed up, people got seated and the party started relatively close to the appointed time.

It had rained really hard in the morning and we did not know if we were going to have to shift to plan B. This was partly why the chairs were late. The clouds cleared and the grass was dry so the park turned out to be a wonderful location for the ceremony. We were able to shuffle though all the official shots and get the group off to the reception. I will talk about the ceremony next week when I get more images up. I will leave you with this one as i did not notice it until I was in post. The emotion Samantha expresses reflects the entire ceremony.

You may need to zoom in, but you will see it.

Take care...  Doug