Now that I’ve given you all the low-down on the days leading up to Dan and Megan’s wedding, I’ll get you up to date on the goings–on to the wedddddding day!

Saturday, Gettin’ Ready

As is the case with most varieties of [what essentially is] portrait work, I think the best way to describe wedding photography is to say it involves capturing a series of “moments.” One of my favorite “moments” to capture  is the time leading up to the wedding, when the bride and her bridesmaids are preparing for the big event.  Allow me to wax…philosophical… for a moment. When the bride and her “women of honor” (as Megan had dubbed her entire bevvy of bridesmaids) are getting ready for the wedding, it’s much more than just a bunch of girls putting on clothes and make-up; It’s a beautifully emotional time for the bride and the women surrounding her. It’s a rite of passage. While the bride’s mother and girlfriends may not be losing the bride, there does seem to be this sense that they’re preparing to hand her over to the man she’s about  to wed. There’s a real bittersweet feeling to this period of time before the wedding ceremony takes place. It’s, at once, both a flurry of putting finishing touches on things, as well as a time which is being taken in and savored. </waxing philosophical>

Saturday, THE MAIN EVENT!!!!!

It was finally time for the wedding! One aspect of having the wedding at the land co-op was that pretty much, you walked anywhere you went. That included a walk with Megan , her women of honor, and her parents from Dan’s family’s home, to the field where the ceremony was being held. It was yet another moment that felt like the people involved should be making mental snapshots of it, just as I was making literal snapshots of it with my camera (especially the part when Megan’s parents stopped in their tracks to began singing  and Al Green song and dancing, to try to crack the girls up!)

As it seems is always the case whenever I’ve been to a wedding, there was bad weather looming on Dan and Megan’s wedding day. Not so much what people want when there’s an outdoor ceremony, with no real way of moving it to an indoor venue. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful for Megan and Dan’s ceremony. It took place late enough in the day that the sun was a little low, which meant it wasn’t beating down on everyone and that the lighting was pretty ideal for photography.  I had made sure I was able to sit on the front row of chairs that had been set up in the field, so I could capture all the action without being that annoying wedding photog, who has to scurry around conspicuously to get the shots needed (been there, done that.)

Okay, the next bit is perhaps my favoooorite photographic moments of the whole time I was in Florida – and it was because Dan and Meg were very intentional about having photos in a particular portion of  the Co-op.

After the “I do’s”, the wedding party went directly to an old pick-up that belong to Dan’s father. I even felt a little bad because I was riding around on what, essentially, worked as a parade float as the wedding party drove around their guests and down to the swamp where we were headed. Such is the life of the life of an embedded wedding photographer!

The ride in the back of that pick-up definitely was a wild one! Dan took some of those back roads pretty fast, and we all had the wind running through our hair and weren’t exactly sure we weren’t going to lose a passenger or two by being jostled around on those unpaved roads.

But that drive lead us to the most AMAZING thing: A swamp. With a boardwalk running through it. I was so grateful that Meg and Dan thought to take us all there to do some photos. It was perfect! And I even thought it was as a good little “moment” in which the wedding party could catch their breath for a few minutes between the ceremony itself, and the high key event that the reception was.

Saturday, The Reception (holla!)

Dan and Megan’s reception was basically the best party I’ve ever been to (I realize I don’t get out much, but I feel pretty sure that everyone in attendance would say that same thing )

There were more toasts honoring Megan and Dan. Including one from her father that involved the groomsmen emerging from the crowd at a key moment, each holding a bottle of tequila, all of which were then passed around for the guests to share and toast “to friendship.”

One thing that made me feel so at home with these folks was that the bride and her family are fans of old soul music. JUST LIKE ME! Al Green and Earth, Wind and Fire could probably be considered as honorary guests at this wedding. And I was super excited when the band they hired started playing, and it was a three-piece soul and funk cover band! I’d  never seen anything like this reception. EVERYONE was dancing the entire time the band was on stage. Everyone. And it was fun because there weren’t a whole lot of people coupled off during the dancing. Everyone was just sort of dancing with everyone around them. Even during the “slow jam” the band played (Prince’s “Purple Rain”!), everyone just danced more slowly with everyone else. Besides being a heck of a lot of fun for everyone involved, I thought it also made for some great photography.

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So that pretty much concludes The Epic Blog About Megan and Dan’s Wedding. I am still so grateful I was given this opportunity to photograph their wedding. It was a very special experience and. There are still approximately 1.2 zillion photos from the three days I spent in Florida for the Norman-Lombardo wedding, and I’ll be cherry-picking more of my favorites to end up in my Wedding gallery. I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’m starting to love wedding photography…