Cold weather aside, we had a great time in Edmonton. It was our first wedding in Alberta, and Edmonton is a cool (no pun intended) city. Even if it feels a bit like Siberia this time of year.

Beers. Sun. Beach. Party. Big hats. Tequila. More party.

You know the drill.

The story doesn’t always need to be told that way though. It doesn’t always have to be all sunshine and roses.

Raegen and Doug struck us as an intense couple. They are fun, for sure, but they also have a seriousness to them that we really liked. This broody feel was what motivated us when we photographed their wedding.

It’s OK to be serious once in a while.

Everyone is weird in their own way, and when you embrace the weirdness, life is that much more awesome.

Weird is a good thing.

When we met Karen and Cameron in 2010, we left thinking this: “Penguin ice sculpture? That’s weird.” You see, Cameron had intended on building a massive ice sculpture for their wedding. Penguins was the theme for their wedding, so Cam wanted to smash a home-run with this ice sculpture idea.

So, missing a few details, our first impression of the pengiun-ice-sculpture-wedding was, well, weird.

We basically envisioned a totally tripped-out wedding. Hunter S. Thompson greeting at us the door with penguin shaped jello shots. Oompa loompas in penguin outfits roller blading around the reception with trays of absinthe. And the whole kumbaya revolving around a humongous penguin ice sculpture that would be spraying Bacardi out of it’s stout.

It would be weird. It would be awesome.

Even though the penguin ice sculpture never actually happened, hearing of a wedding that had something a bit different and a bit off the wall was awesome.

And weird or not, we liked Karen and Cam a lot from day one. They found us through Rebecca Bollwitt (aka Miss 604 - a Vancouver blogger) and pictures of her dangling from a building (which is weird), and we’re glad they did.

We’ve always referred to Nordica as our baby, and it is. Nordica’s roots are deep within both our lives and we’ve nurtured it, fed it, and watched it grow ever since we gave it a name and started shaping it’s identity in November of 2009. Like any proud parents, we shone the limelight a bit too bright on a baby that we knew nothing about, and we may have blinded ourselves a bit along the way.

But, with naive in full force, we pushed forward believing our baby would grow to be awesome.

Nordica took a few steps in 2010 – steps that we were very proud of and still are – but those steps were not unlike a crazy teenager’s.

More confident then experienced, more talking then listening, more dreaming then action. In 2010, Nordica was the loud-mouthed guy who screamed greatness having yet achieved a thing, and yelling to the world all the things he wanted to achieve one day.

Then, in 2011, it started to happen.

Some – not all – of the things the loud-mouthed teenager was screaming began to happen. It was as though Nordica had just cruised the university, had a dream job in mind, and actually got hired.

We dreamt about photographing a wedding in Iceland. Nordica ended up beside glaciers on one trip, and isolated countryside the next.

We dreamt about photographing multicultural weddings. We found ourselves in Sikh temples, Mexican jungles, Swedish archipelagos, historical farmlands, Indian ceremonies and faraway ranches.

Throughout 2011, we lived the dreams that we envisioned to be possible when we first started. We had big ideas, and somehow they came true.

And as 2011 drew to a close, we realize that we weren’t yelling a bunch of bullshit without substance anymore, and we weren’t living in some sort of fantasy that would be whisked away.

We realized that our little man, Nordica, had done a great deal of maturing, and we are proud of who he’s becoming. There are many lessons to be learned still, but experience and achieving goals has lit a fire in our little man, and we look forward to seeing where the journey takes him in 2012.

Bryan makes beer that would knock your socks off. At his wedding, the beer he served the guests was absolutely awesome. 12% alcohol content and smooth as silk. Delicious.

When we first met Grace and Bryan, we never would have guessed that one of their favourite pastimes together is checking out brewhouses. And as we happen to enjoy slinging the odd pint ourselves, we felt right at home with these two. It’s nice when common interests trickle to the surface, especially when we spend so much time together on a wedding day.

Melissa and Josh’s wedding portrait request was something along these lines: Just do what you do. We’ll give you all the time you need.

Creative freedom is a very good thing.

One of the biggest challenges that we look forward to with weddings is scouting locations, and ideally, never using the same spot twice. So when a couple gives us fee reigns, it’s happy times in Nordica land.

When we arrived at one of the spots we’d picked, we hopped out of the car and scoped things out.

“Vintage Nordica”, Josh said.

Mission accomplished.

The most interesting in-between moments for us usually have nothing to do with photography, and are often what we remember from the wedding. It can be a conversation we were having with the couple while taking their picture, or perhaps something that happened, something we’ll never forget.

Take Daisy and Mali, for example.

We were on day three of their three day Sikh wedding, and we were finishing their portraits beside the Olympic Village in Vancouver. Everything was going smooth – the pictures were turning out great and we were right on schedule for the 6:00PM arrival time at the reception in Surrey, where the 500 or so guests were waiting (about 45 minutes away).

At about 5:15, we cut things off so that we wouldn’t be late.

“Are you sure? We can keep going and get more if you think we should”, Daisy said.

“We’ve got lots – let’s head out so you’re not late”, we replied.

So Daisy and Mali hopped into their car, and we hopped into ours. We fired up our Jimmy (which had just shy of 400,000 kms – we’ll come back to that in a second) and they sort of fired up their VW.

We say sort of because, well, it sort of didn’t want to start. And eventually didn’t. It was dead.

So, here we were on a tight schedule with a stunning bride looking like she was on her way to a fashion shoot, an Indian groom with a bit of a James Bond thing going on, two photographers and a dead car. We did the most logical thing that came to mind and had Daisy steer the car while we pushed it about a kilometer, to a spot where it would be safe overnight.

Parallel parking a dead car with no power-steering wasn’t exactly easy, but we managed. And into the Jimmy we went, which was comedy in itself because earlier that day, we had been joking that it was due to die any day with so many kilometers.

But the Jimmy survived and we made it to the reception on time, and nobody had any idea we had just been pushing around a dead VW 45 minutes earlier.

So there are different interpretations of in-between moments in our industry, but for us, every wedding seems to have some sort of a special memory that sticks. Like pushing a dead car.

Day one:

Day two:

Day three:

Daisy and Mali’s three day Sikh wedding was as intense as it gets. And we’re not just blowing smoke and mirrors here – they partied hard.

5 am mornings, 2 am nights, lots of laughter, lots of tears, wild dancing, serious stage-diving, extreme partying, incredible food and drinks, and lots of love. It was full-on.

Their wedding had it all, and we’re stoked to have been able to come so close to this culture that’s still very new to us.

We’ll post the full wedding soon.