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.

That is the statement you’ll see when you read about Thrive Alive, a foundation that Stephanie and Walter started in 2009. Their passion in life is to make the lives of those effected by cancer more positive, and most of their focus in life is the betterment of others.

Their story is very inspiring.

When they’re not making the world a better place, they share another passion together: sailing their boat. The boat is a big part of Steph and Walt’s lives and you can feel their love for that thing the second you step onto it.

So, it was logical for us to do their Document You session amidst something that held such esteem in their lives. Boating is a passion they share and being together on that boat clearly means a lot to them.

It’s tough for us to put into pictures and a few sentences how much we respect what these two do for others. The world could surely use a few more Stephanies and Walters, and we feel honoured to be photographing their wedding in 2012.

If ever there was a beer slinging, shot-gun firing, barn dancing, deer-antlericious wedding, this was it. 

Meg had a vision for her wedding and there was nothing that could hold her back. She was amazing. Her wingman, Adam, wasn’t so bad either at putting it all together.

Massive props to the two of them for such an incredible wedding. We’ll post the whole thing another day.

We’re actually even taking some time to chill. Recharge the batteries.

Jakob is off to Vegas for a short holiday and Cole will enjoy a week in the land of delicious Tequila. Cole’s even bringing our lovely Nordica accountant, and God knows she deserves it too. We’d be lost without her.

We’re taking turns though, since there are still albums to be designed and photos to be delivered. Plus the usual flood of emails.

We’ve pretty much been either shooting or spending time in our editing caves every day for the last few months. And now as things get a bit lighter, we’ll actually have time to focus on moving things forward. Coming up with new ideas, both for our business and for our photography.

Time to brainstorm. Not that we’re planning on reinventing the wheel for next season, but we have a few ideas floating around.

We’ve actually got something pretty exciting to share very soon, involving sharing what we know and what we’ve learned in the last few years. But more on that in a bit.

Now we’re gonna enjoy a few (in our opinions) well-deserved days off. And get some sun.

Over and out.

/C&J

PS. We’ve also got some cool weddings coming up on the blog. Like this one, for example.

Many months ago, Jill and Ryan contacted us to line up a couple session for June 21st. We’re talking last November they emailed us, and the session had to be on June 21st.

It’s their anniversary, you see, and they’re doing photos every year on their big day.

We think that’s awesome, and good on these two for doing this. It’d be cool to see how their pictures evolve over their many years of marriage together.

This session was done in our favourite Vancouver neighbourhood for photography, East Vancouver.

Wedding photographers probably get this quite a bit.

An inquiry lands in your inbox and the overt politeness and ‘perfect’ feeling of the email feels, well, like you’re being silent shopped by another photographer. Like the email is too good to be true.

Those things happen and we normally just answer as we would to any other email and move on. Forget it.

When Josh and Sarah inquired, their email felt like that. Which is not a bad thing, but we assumed it wouldn’t happen. Plus they were from Seattle, so we figured they were just a couple of photographers. Not that Seattle needs anymore awesome wedding photographers.

Anyways, we were clearly wrong and Sarah and Josh were just simply awesome, extremely kind people.

Their wedding theme was 99 Red Balloons and when they told us that, we basically assumed balloons would be flying around everywhere all day (they were) and that this couple must have had some awesome, fun personalities (they did).

And their wedding was fantastic overall. It was at Brock House in Point Grey, which is just outside of downtown Vancouver, and we’re stoked to have met these two.