Tag backyard

Jes­sica is beau­ti­ful. She radia­tes posi­ti­vity and you can’t meet her and not smile. A lot. When I arri­ved and found her get­ting ready I said her hair loo­ked so cute (it was much dif­fe­rent than during their enga­ge­ment pho­tos) and then she told me that she had got­ten it cut off the night before, after saying goodbye to Tim. He loves her hair short so as a wed­ding gift/​surprise she chop­ped it all off for him! It was such a cool ges­ture and added another ele­ment of anti­ci­pa­tion to the day.

The wed­ding and recep­tion were held at Jessica’s parents house. They had set up the chairs and her mum had wor­ked all sum­mer cul­ti­va­ting the plants and flo­wers to add to the aesthe­tics. It was gor­geous. The bri­dal party came out of the house and down the aisle but you couldn’t really see them until they were coming straight up towards the arbor.

And thats when Tim saw Jess, and star­ted to well up with tears. Which in turn cau­sed me to well up with tears.

I think there were a lot of tears going around <3

See, Gor­geous!

Married, and quite plea­sed with them­sel­ves about it too. Right­fully so.

And then they all dan­ced down the aisle. They all dan­ced all night — but more on that later!

First it was time for some fun formals.

This crew makes flying look easy!

“ooo ooo ooo — can we do a pyra­mid?”… “I don’t know, can you?” I guess the ans­wer is yes!

Then it was just the 3 of us.

These two are such a beau­ti­ful fit.

I loved the cen­ter­pie­ces, and that I could make their wed­ding date out of their table num­bers

These two were toas­ted and roas­ted by their family with the utmost love and regard.

Just the sim­ple act of hol­ding hands and being in the moment with each other *sigh*

They infu­sed them­sel­ves into ever detail and ever aspect of the wed­ding. These film strip time line pho­tos are too cute.

I love it when the cou­ple makes their own toast. Jess & Tim elo­quently than­ked ever­yone who had been with them through the jour­ney that brought them to their wed­ding day.

this IS what love looks like.

Love and a few dance les­sons

And then Jess & her dad had a lovely slow father daugh­ter dance

That broke into some boo­gie woo­gie and brought the crowd to their feet!

I think Dad was relie­ved when it was over

Then Tim & his mother sha­red a lovely dance

I l.o.v.e. this photo

Remem­ber what I said about the dan­cing? This bunch dan­ced all.night.long and they bus­ted some serious moves

This was defi­ni­tely a family affair!

When a sweet inno­cent cake feeding…

goes awry.…

Jess threa­tens revenge

So her dad steps in to keep Tim from being lonely

and then Jess steps in and Tim gets what’s coming to him!

She did try to run away, but he caught her and they made up

Just in time for the first lap dance/​garter remo­val I’ve been wit­ness to.

Too. frea­king. funny.

A good old fashio­ned dollar dance

Soon after that it was the end of my time and they were stilllllllllllllllllll dancing!

And a good time was had by all. Thank you so much for inc­lu­ding me in that.

~melis­sa­ko­ren

I had been searching for a pho­to­grapher for a few weeks when a neigh­bor refe­rred us to Melissa. Being a “do-​it your­self” bride, I was given a lot of advice on what I should pay, what I should look for, does she use a good digi­tal camera…etc, etc. (I’m sure you get the picture-​no pun inten­ded.) My (now) hus­band and I met with her and imme­dia­tely felt com­for­ta­ble. She is fun and witty and know­led­gea­ble about her field. Not to men­tion her pri­ces are great if you’re on a bud­get like we were. Melissa made us WANT to get our pic­tu­res taken by her. We plan­ned some enga­ge­ment pho­tos and had a really good time with her as we wal­ked around. What I liked best about the ses­sion was that she was open for anything and took into account that they were OUR pic­tu­res. She wan­ted to make them mean something. And she did. We used them around our recep­tion. On the day of our wed­ding though, she ROCKED, for lack of a bet­ter word. Not only did she take ama­zing pic­tu­res of everything and anything, she hel­ped pin bou­ton­nie­res on the grooms­men and fathers, she pre­for­med emer­gency sur­gery on my bustle when it kept drag­ging, and she made us laugh the whole time. Melissa is truly a great pho­to­grapher because she knows the ins and outs of her trade and recog­ni­zes the impor­tance of laugh­ter and sim­pli­city on a day you’ll remem­ber for the rest of your life. We’ll be using her for years and years to come. We highly recom­mend her! ~Jess and Tim