Which is a strange thing at a venue people book specifically for the water, and Callie's mother said the word "backup" four times before ten o'clock.
Callie did not care. I want to be clear about that, because it turned out to matter for the entire day. She was in a robe on the floor of a suite with her sister and two friends from college, and when someone brought up the tent option she said she'd rather be married in fog than not be married at all, and went back to what she was doing. That was the tone. Nobody spent the morning managing anything.
The fog came in overnight and stayed. At nine in the morning you could not see the water from the hotel.
The ceremony was outside anyway. A hundred and ten people under a sky the color of a nickel, and the fog softened everything so completely that the images look almost like they were lit for it. Her uncle read something short. The dog was present and behaved. Then, around 4:40, the whole thing burned off. Not gradually. It went from gray to gold in what felt like six or seven minutes, and I pulled them out of cocktail hour twice, for four minutes and then for six, and we made the Editorial Ten in eleven minutes total on the lawn and at the seawall. Those are the frames on their walls now.
That kind of light is not something you can plan for, but the locations were, which is the only reason we got them at all. They danced until the band's last song and then someone found a speaker. I left at eleven. Sixty of them were still on the terrace.
His brother eventually stabbed it through with the pin backward and they agreed not to mention it. They chose not to do a first look. I asked twice, because I usually do, and Callie was certain. It cost us light and it was the right call. Her walk down the aisle is the best sequence in the gallery, and the reason is Sam's face, which does a thing in about four frames that you cannot direct, request, or replicate.
Sam and his brothers were downstairs failing at a boutonniere. This is a photograph I have taken at close to a hundred weddings now and it is different every time.
We did getting-ready in the corner room on the third floor, the one with the wide window, because on a gray morning the light coming through that fog is the softest thing you'll ever shoot in. No overheads, no flash. Her grandmother's bracelet took eleven minutes to fasten and I photographed all eleven.
Venue — Wentworth by the Sea
Photography — Matisse West Photography
Planning — Hollis & Vine Events
Florals — Marsh Rose Studio
Catering — Coburn & Ash
Vendors
Wentworth by the Sea
