Winter wedding at the Renaissance, Kingston❤️ Sara and Iain & a tale of wintery love

Documentary Wedding PhotoWedding PhotojournalismWinter Wedding2019

Dec 2

Somewhere between our first email, and their epic wintry wedding, I fell in love with Sara and Iain & their love story.

We’d met at Sara’s friends’ wedding in Toronto. But Sara hadn’t wanted to disturb me then, she said. So she emailed me a month or two later, having seen the photographs I took.

She told me hers would be a February wedding and I was immediately intrigued. I don’t do too many winter weddings, so the prospect of getting snowy portraits was exciting.❄️

(Also, I’m forever looking for chances to fall in love with Canadian winter, which people tell me is the best…)

Anyway, I just had a feeling we were right for each other.

Great first impression, Viara… NOT😳

Our first Skype meeting went like this: I MISSED IT COMPLETELY. 🙈

As someone who prides myself on being reliable… this was a total faux pas. I was downtown Kingston, watching my kids get their haircuts when I realized I was supposed to be Skyping with Sara and Iain (they were in London, UK; because Iain is from there).

Luckily they were forgiving of my calendar syncing fiascos, and we met just a couple of hours later, and had a nice chat. I think it was at this meeting they mentioned that feeding chickadees in the forest was a part of the wedding plan.

We met again in person in the dreary months of winter. They were so cute. 😍 We discussed the logistics of going to feed chickadees in the middle of winter IN A WEDDING GOWN and hair & makeup.

It was all pretty cool-sounding to me.

The wedding day arrived!

It was cold but not as bad as February *could* have dished up. It was also sunny, therefore beautiful.

Sara got ready at her mother’s house downtown. She went upstairs to get her dress on and Iain showed up. He waited downstairs, and I grabbed a photo of his face when he first saw her coming down the stairs. Priceless.

Then we went to Lemoine Point for a walk, fed chickadees, walked on the frozen waters of Lake Ontario at City Park, found some rotten potatoes laid out neatly in a line at the MacKenzie Pavillion… rode a cast iron lion. Sara’s stepdad kindly chauffeured us all around town for our adventures.

Sara had to wear a garbage bag over her dress on the way there to keep it from getting dirty from the city grit and salt…

Just the usual stuff.

There was some decent chill time in between as well (Iain went to lunch at the Redhouse with his UK family who’d arrived shortly before).

Finally, we headed to the Renaissance Event Venue, for the ceremony was about to begin.

The rest of the day was picture-perfect, from the beautiful ceremony at which Sara’s uncles sang songs and played guitar, to the dinner – complete with Shakespearean and punny table charts, and finally, the dancing.

Kids on the dance-floor

One of the things I remember about this wedding was how many young people (kids and teens) there were on the dance-floor. It warmed my heart and creative spirits to see this. I felt even more sad to leave at the end of the night than usual.

Let me explain: as a wedding photographer, I get to experience the absolute highest highs right alongside people on their wedding day.

Because I’m an emo kind of person, I start to feel pretty connected to the people I photograph. I put a lot of my own emotions in taking the photographs. I think this emotional energy helps me to take the photographs I do. ESPECIALLY on the dance-floor.

So when I see the kids, dancing and overcoming shyness or whatever, it makes my heart burst. It reminds me my own kids, and in those moments, I feel that we’re all the same – we are all just beautiful humans trying our best to enjoy this life, growing through its pains and revelling in its joys.

When I leave a wedding at the end of the evening, it’s always bittersweet. I know I’ve made a bond with the people I’ve photographed, but the whole blur of joy and happiness I’ve experienced is now coming to a close. I drive home, usually hyper and singing. (If you watch my IG stories, you’ll know all too well…).

[And then I watch Wedding Crashers. The first 15 minutes of that movie are like the best 15 minutes of any movie in the history of movies. “You shut your mouth when you’re talking to me!” (the rest of the movie is blah, but I’m usually asleep by then…)

Wedding photography is a trip, and photographing Sara and Iain’s wedding was a very joyful and emotional one.

I’ve loved staying in touch with them on social media – they had a second wedding in the UK which looked amazing – and now they’re closer to this neck of the woods once again!

I am really really happy that they chose me and trusted me.😍

I hope the photographs will show some aspects of this epic day.

[If you want to see the slideshow I made with music, scroll to the bottom of the photos and click the youtube link]