Garden City Hotel Wedding

We feel truly lucky to have been a part of Julie and Marc's incredible wedding at the Garden City Hotel. The sun was shining brilliantly, setting the stage for a beautiful celebration.

We've had the pleasure of photographing two of Julie's cousins' weddings, so seeing so many familiar faces made the day even more special. The wedding party was filled with vibrant energy throughout the event.

The most unforgettable moment was when Julie, a talented trombone player, surprised everyone (including Marc!) by joining the fantastic Hank Lane band for a set.

The dance floor was electric, with Julie fully embracing the moment and dancing with as many friends and family as possible. We're genuinely grateful to have shared this unforgettable day with Julie, Marc, and their loved ones, capturing memories that will last a lifetime.

Tribeca Rooftop wedding: Salisha and Andrew

Salisha and Andew smile with their whole bodies. On a typical day, it’s a pleasure to be around their cheer and energy … but on their wedding day, their joy and personalities were busting down the walls of the fantastic Tribeca Rooftop.

The wedding was filled with talented performers bringing energy, bringing song, bringing emotion, and frankly bringing it, but the deep emotion of the day was anything but a performance.

Thank you for making the world a better place with your laughter and love, Salisha and Andrew!

Edgewood County Club wedding

It was great to be back at the Edgewood Country Club for Zoe and Judah’s wedding. Edgewood is a beautiful venue that recently expanded with extensive construction and renovation. It is just the place it takes to house a wedding with rafter-shaking energy like this. We knew from our Manhattan engagement that they would bring the style and emotion, but as you'll see see, their friends and family also brought the party.

Band: Frank Simmons Band
Caterer: Northern Valley Affairs
Florist: Adam Leffel Productions
Videographer: Creative Image Productions
Hair: Vanessa Pesantez
Makeup: Michelle Stern Beauty
Dress: estee’ Couture

Box House Hotel wedding

Once upon a time, we were writers, and this wedding shows why we changed over to documenting lives through our lens. Because using words here about how joyful, raucous, hilarious or ecstatic seem both obvious and not enough when you see the expressions on Shayna and Brennan’s face at almost any point on their wedding day. It was electric to be around them and in Brooklyn’s fantastically chic Box House Hotel.

Harvard Club wedding

Neither rain nor more rain nor … even more rain … could keep Kelly and John from a marvelous wedding day. The grandeur of the reception at the Harvard Club and ceremony at Church of St. Vincent Ferrer didn’t hurt, but their deep connection to each other and family was truly what defined the day.

Legacy Castle wedding

Right from the start we knew Suzette and Andres had a tight bond — so tight that they introduced themselves to us as “SuDre.” We also knew that a giant (for 2021) Hindu/Dominican wedding featuring a couple as fun as they are would be raucous , joyous, and just an amazing experience throughout. Few venues could properly hold all of this energy — the pre-2020 plan was to essentially take over the city of Montreal — but The Legacy Castle served perfectly.

Le Chateau South Salem wedding

Usually our highest compliment for a wedding is “Boy, I wish I’d been a guest!” But our assistant Brendan did us one better in his assessment of Lauren and Taylor’s wedding. As we packed up, he said “Well, I don’t need to plan a wedding now — this was perfect in every way, I’ll just do this one.” There are, of course, a few more stages in wedding planning than just saying “Give me the Lauren and Taylor!” but it shows what a fantastic experience this day was, partially due to the fine work of Le Chateau but also because of the great spirit and kindness of their friends and family (which are probably not part of the package.)

Bryant Park Grill wedding

Hudson River Engagement Photo

It was a wonderful shoot with Barrie and Ari, who were game to cross a highway and brave the winter-like temperatures and winds of a riverside night for this.

We are glad also for the magic sauce that allowed us to be comfortable shooting portraits for the gorgeous ambient at 1/100th, 135mm f/1.8, ISO 8000. ⁣

New York Botanic Garden wedding at The Garden Terrace

The New York Botanic Garden is a magical place, and Amma and Jesse’s wedding made the most of it. From the incredible greenery — enhanced with the wonderful asymmetric designs of WYLD — to an absolutely crazy dance floor featuring Jesse’s hilarious and unique dance moves, every part of this day reminded us that part of the fun of this job is that we get to go back and re-live the stories ourselves.

Mansion at Oyster Bay wedding

Here it comes, 2021! I don’t think we’ve ever been so excited to document or even just be at weddings again, tied only with last June when our job and passion became legal again. Every wedding has felt deeper and more meaningful than ever, as every guest had to be deeply conscious and *work* just to be there, and we are vaccinated as of the end of March (but still careful) and ready to mix with that wonderful energy again.

And what a fantastic way to start 2021 than with Alli and Alex. A little FYI: We were once slated to star in our own reality show — but it turns out that you’re not the perfect reality show subject when your job is to be an oasis of calm at all times. Still, it was a fun experience to make and we got to meet amazing people like Alli. And since then, she met the amazing Alex, and they make beautiful music together … literally. They met when they joined the same band.

They were originally slated to have a big party at the Mansion at Oyster Bay. That didn’t happen, but we are so thankful that the Mansion opened itself to us to do portraits with them.

George Peabody Library Baltimore wedding

Probably the greatest honor we feel as wedding photographers is doing a wedding for another wedding photographer. After all, these people spend each day looking at this stuff, and know exactly what they like. But it was an even greater pleasure when that photographer is someone like Michael Stravinos, who is not just talented, but has been a friend, a workshop student, and collaborator.

And then you add that the wedding would be at the fantastic George Peabody Library in Baltimore, a place I’ve wanted to shoot in ever since I first saw it? We jumped at the chance. It didn’t matter that we also had to be in New York and Pennsylvania that weekend … we were going to make this happen.

It was amazing start to finish, filled with tears, laughter, Greek dancing, beautiful details, a solemn church ceremony … dripping with meaning and emotion throughout.

For the photographers out there, this was our first wedding with the Sony A9, and apart from the more technical aspects it was incredible to be able to shoot all of the events of the day completely silently, getting angles during prayers and at moments of peak emotion while intruding as little as possible. We always want to capture the real emotions so that you can look back and feel what it was like to be there in the midst of it, and this has been a helpful tool for us.

Grand Central engagement photo

Man, we love looking back at pictures and re-seeing them through new edits. We love the color of city lights, but a beautiful black and white moment also lived in this photo all along. There are reasons we deliver every image to clients in both color *and* black and white.

It can strike a subtly (or sometimes starkly) different tone, make for a very different album or collage to put together, or just show you images you've seen for years in a new way.

Rockleigh Wedding

There are a lot of reasons I'm glad this photo exists, but the most simple one is that if I told people the story of this photo without the proof, they probably couldn't imagine exactly how rainy it was.

It was so rainy that it took seven different umbrellas to make this photo happen -- for the couple; for Tatiana holding the flash; for the flash; for me, and then for the people holding all of these other umbrellas.

It's a story also about how we should feel free to cut loose at the end of the wedding, but above all it's a story of trust. It takes quite a bit to come outside in rain like this in a wedding dress, serenaded by storm warnings blaring in the background on 200 guests' iPhones, and we'll always be grateful.

Ashford Castle, Ireland wedding

It's hard to overstate the beauty of Ashford Castle: It was something so profound that Casey knew she had to share it with her friends and family, even though absolutely none of them, Casey and Ford included, live in Ireland. But maybe, for a second, let's not put it center-stage. Let's focus on the bonds that made Casey and Ford plan a complicated multi-day celebration in an Irish castle just to show their friends and family a good time, and the bonds that made so many of these friends and family show up that they completely sold out the castle.

And it's not a small castle.

Ireland is an incredibly gorgeous country -- the cliches are true. There are colors of green that don't exist anywhere else, times when you have to turn down the saturation in your camera just so reality doesn't look fake. But, of course, it comes with a lot of what the Irish call "soft" weather: Rain, and a lot of it.

So yes, it rained on this wedding, but … well, all you need to know about the mood is that, after days of carousing together, there was enough joyful energy left that festivities were still going strong by sunrise.

Thank you to Olivia Buckley for her fantastic planning work, making a wet, complicated event come out perfectly, and to Casey and Ford for kindly planning their Ireland wedding just at the right time for our "working honeymoon" in the best place we could imagine.