Katya summed it up quite nicely when we were driving home at the end of her wedding day in Punta Cana. The day had started at 4AM for the sunrise beach ceremony, and it was just after midnight. We were driving to the resort as the day was winding down. Katya and Rob were in the car, along with their videographers Kiera and Josh, and it was pitch black outside. The road felt like we were driving through a minefield.

Katya was fiddling with her iPod and getting into the music a bit, and settled on a song. As we were driving, she said:

“Three years. Crazy. Remember having that coffee in Vancouver”?

“Definitely. It feels like a lifetime ago”. We first met Katya back then, and she was one of the first photographers in Vancouver who reached out to us when we started our business. Actually, she was the first one to give us a bit of a lesson when she wouldn’t refer us a wedding because our prices were too low. We’ll never forget that.

“Time flies”, Katya said, and she continue playing with her iPod.

She switched songs and picked the one we used in this blog post. It’s a song by Jesh de Rox, and was meant to be their first dance song. The first dance actually never happened, but Katya got very sentimental when the song started playing.

It was a great moment to wind down the wedding day, and summed up Katya perfectly. Always thinking of others, and a genuinely kind person. We never would have dreamt up that three years after having that coffee with Katya we would be sitting in a bouncy car in the Dominican Republic, but looking back at it, we feel like we won the lottery.

+ Backyard weddings.
+ Abbotsford (about 45 minutes east of Vancouver).
+ Meeting couples for the first time on their wedding day and they end up being rad.
+ Old school barns.
+ Black and white photos.
+ Little kids doing crazy shit at receptions.

Sally and Ryan’s wedding had all of these things.

Rani and Richard’s wedding was one of those sunny winter days in February.

And even tougher to do your wedding portraits outside for a few hours.

Ashley and Andrew are a Edmonton wedding photographer husband-wife team, so they knew what to expect when they planned their wedding for January. There were little surprises when it was -50 °C with the windchill, but at least it wasn’t raining.

As we arrived in Whistler, we drove all over the place picking out spots for Richard and Rani’s portraits. We usually put a lot of effort into the portraits on the wedding day, so with the help of our two photographer friends, Brisbane wedding photographer husband and wife team Todd and Alyda, we came up with a strategy.

But here’s the thing about strategies and wedding portraits: The best portraits are the ones that just happen, sans strategy.

Like this one. The sun cooperated perfectly, Rani and Richard were excellent models and everything just fell into place.

So, often strategies just kind of go out the window when we’re actually doing the portraits, no matter how much we plan in advance.