“I cannot wait to shoot Tara and Robert’s third wedding celebration next year”- I jokingly said this to Tara’s parents this summer as we were shooting round two of their celebration. If they called and said that was happening, I’d be all over it! If there’s anything that the last two year’s has taught me, it’s to roll with the punches and not take everything so seriously. Some Covid couples had two wedding celebrations; most of them probably laugh at the whole thing now. Not at Covid itself by any means, but that when they first got engaged, they probably had a significantly different set of expectations than what happened in reality.
Tara and Robert’s reality, when it came to their celebration at the Loews Hotel in Philadelphia, was pretty awesome. Tara and her ladies got ready in a suite overlooking one of the most storied cities in America. Once they wrapped up, we joined them for a few quick pictures before heading over to City Hall for some wedding party pictures. Wait, what was that?! You heard me right, we basically started the day with wedding party pictures because they weren’t going through the process of having a ceremony- They did that they year prior. We found a great shaded spot on the north side and did our thing. After we wrapped up, we shifted to blitzing out the family pictures. If you thinking “blitzing”, sounds erratic or, dare I say, violent, that’s not what I mean. What I DO mean though is that we have a system in place that gets through family and wedding party pictures with speed and efficiency. No one ever comes to me when they’re in the booking process and says, “Nathan, we want family and wedding party pictures to drag out as long as possible”. For this reason, we have a specific order we go through and this allows us to flow with ease.
After we wrapped up, we had some time to kill so we wandered around the area finding awesome pockets of light and interesting textures to play with. Full disclosure though, when you have a great looking couple like Robert and Tara, you can put them in front of anything and they’ll look like rockstars. We did our thing for a while and then headed back over to the Loews to shoot a few large groupings of family before cocktail hour started.
I think if you did a blind poll of wedding guests, they would vote a ratio of 7-3 that weddings should always start with cocktail hour. Science. Tara and Robert love science. That is why they applied this info to their celebration. Guests show up and head right to the bar and a full array of tasty treats. Sign me up! I cannot wait until round three of Tara and Robert’s wedding celebration!
A while later, everyone made their way to the ballroom for the official party to start. Intros, toasts, dancing, eating, partying and a whole host of other shenanigans happened for the next 3+ hours. It was marvelous and was yet another BLINK, and the night is over type of wedding. I may be partial, but we get the best couples and their parties always go this way.
If you don’t believe anything I just said, check out the images below, they’re solid proof!
