The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers Wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

While New York is on pause, we are going back to amazing weddings of the past that came when we were too busy to show them off. For good reason, Amy and Jan were one of the first that came to mind. We don’t need to tell you how fun they are or how magnetically attracted they are to each other or how much fun the wedding was … you’re about to see that for yourself. And we don’t need to tell you that The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers pulled it off incredibly well — they’re managed by Abigail Kirch; that comes with the territory.

It was a thrill both to tell this story and to look back at a wedding like this.

Stonewall Estates wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

New York State has a neat trick in the fall: time travel. Go north or south up I-87, or head up into the mountains, and you can go back and forth weeks on fall foliage. So there are few more beautiful places to get married in early October than in a gorgeous pastoral Catskills venue like the Stonewall Estates, and everything came together perfectly for Nigam and Bryant’s wedding, with crisp blue skies and blazing orange leaves complementing all of the gorgeous colors of the Hindu elements of the wedding. The amazing team at Tanari Events Not only seamlessly combined South Asian and Western elements, but seemingly disparate overtones — the decor was both highly elegant and extremely comfortable, something that could accommodate both board games in the woods with your family and Nigam and Bryant’s dashing couture tuxedos.

Since the Haldi and mendhi were the day before and every one of the guests was traveling to the area, that atmosphere made for a feeling of a family reunion or a country retreat, a weekend where you can find your comfort and fun whether you just want to sit around a fire or go wild on the dance floor. Nigam and Bryant are so warm and kind that you feel like your day is a bit better just being in the same room as them, so we loved seeing how much joy they had with their friends and family.

Yale Club wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

We loved this wedding so much it hurts.

If we’d written that at any other time, you could write it off as florid hyperbole. But now it is keenly true: Not only are Melissa and Zach fantastic people to be around whose love for each other is obvious, but they celebrated that love and their commitment fervently and wildly, surrounded by friends and family, dancing and laughing and sweating and dipping each other deeply to the amazing music of The Hook Club in the regal beauty of Yale Club.

We think that it’s so important to be able to do this that we’ve dedicated our lives to telling these sorts of stories, and it hurts to have so much uncertainty about when we can all safely crowd together on a dance floor again, singing and yelling and smiling until our cheeks ache.

But seeing amazing celebrations like theirs still brings us an incredible amount of joy, because we know that we will get back there again. This, too, shall pass. And no celebration will ever feel sweeter than when we can all come back together.

And Melissa has a heck of a party dress for just such an occasion.

We want to reward people willing to take a chance on hope as well as help people through challenging times, so we have extended our 2020 Sales to weddings as well. We cannot wait to tell stories of celebration again, and we are well-practiced at helping couples work through related details and uncertainty.

Central Park Elopement /  by Ryan Brenizer

Katherine and Zak are clearly magical creatures.

When these Australians came to us and said “We would like to get married and then shoot portraits in Central Park in February, and the entire time I will be wearing a fabulous mini-dress,” we thought “Ok, we’re up for anything, but you do know February is a bit different than where you're from, right?”

And then the day came … glorious, sunny, 65 degrees. Have faith, and magic may come.

There is something incredibly special about a New York elopement … and Tatiana and I know, because we had one of our own.

We know that a lot of plans look uncertain right now. When our own wedding date kept getting pushed back to find the right date for friends and family, we finally said “You know what? We really want the big party, and we’re going to have it. But we’ve waited long enough. Let’s just get married, and THEN plan our big wedding.”

It was a glorious decision for us, and we want to help others have the same flexibility. We are offering bookings and gift certificates for elopements at a special rate of $200 per half-hour … and if you then book a bigger wedding later, we will offer an extra 10 percent off on top of any other discounts.

We consider our relationship to clients to be “the friends who have literally done this more than a thousand times before,” and in the case of elopements we’ve planned it for ourselves as well. For Katherine and Zak, we had the unique opportunity to plan not only to location of each portrait, but the exact location of the ceremony. Since they are magical creatures, they also had the luck of a deserted Bethesda Terrace, making a fabulous background for beginning their new life.

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden wedding photo /  by Ryan Brenizer

Sony A9, Canon 45mm T/S @ f/2.8, 1/500th, ISO 500

We were just down in Miami for Sara and Joseph’s amazing wedding at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and as soon as we started scouting it we had a problem: There were so many amazing spots that in a few minutes of looking around we got about eight hours worth of portrait ideas. But we made our own path and found this secret grove of banyan trees, knowing how much they both loved them, letting them enjoy a few minutes together before the lovely chaos of the wedding day began.

Thanks to planner Michael Masi for putting this amazing day together!

Park Chateau wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

Daytime weddings have a good number of benefits in some situations, such as convenience for certain guests to lighter, airy reception atmosphere, but many couples are nervous about them for two reasons: First, it can mean a really, really early start time for hair and makeup. Second, couples may worry that guests won’t be able to cut loose and have a wild time when it’s still early and sunny in the reception space.

There’s not much we can do about the former, but Judy and Denny’s Park Chateau wedding should forever put the latter worry at ease. They and their guests were ready to celebrate. The dance floor was literally vibrating with the energy, including a surprise dance performance for Denny by Judy and her bridesmaids.

One of the things that keeps weddings so fresh for us after well over a thousand is the incredible variety of emotions and experiences throughout the day, What other day of your life do you find yourself crying with heartfelt emotion at 9 a.m. and having your shirt ripped off on the dance floor by 5? Weddings are all of the intimate beauty and promises that ads and magazines focus on, but that celebration with friends and family is a crucial part, too. It’s the part that takes most of the time and energy to plan, and when it comes together in countless moments of joy like this, it was certainly worth it.

Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill Mansion wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

We’ve been having some fun this winter revisiting weddings, given that one of the fun things about wedding work is that it can be constantly re-interpreted. We shoot and deliver a huge amount of photos — indeed, events are the only sort of photography where it matters how good the 500th-best photo you took in a single day was. Over the course of your life, you can divvy up your photos in different ways — photos you want to put in a gorgeous album or big on your wall; photos you want to put on Facebook to show off the fun your friends had; photos your parents will put on their fridge. But also you can come back to photos and see them in different ways — with the number of photos in a wedding, it’s like that each time you will see a photo that feels like a welcome surprise.

And so we come back to Amanda and Mitchell’s wonderful wedding at the Tappan Hill Mansion to show a different way to view the images — entirely in black and white. We actually give black and white copies of each wedding photo we deliver, and it’s a great way to make it feel fresh and tell the story in new ways. Here we feel that the tone highlights the deeply felt emotion of the day.

We hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed revisiting this day!

Trinidad and Tobago wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

Roger and Aleena’s wedding was special to us in a number of ways. First, it was in Trinidad, giving us the opportunity to enjoy a beautiful country, warm figuratively and (very much) literally. Second, it was at La Soledad Estate, a venue that was originally built to produce two of the most important substances on Earth: coffee and chocolate. But mostly we appreciated it because of Roger and Aleena.

Roger is a talented wedding photographer, and it is always an exciting honor to get to turn the lens on someone so savvy and knowledgeable. Aleena is an airline pilot, which not only came in handy for meeting them in person but shows her incredible drive and intelligence. But more than anything we were awed in how kind and calm they are together.

Picture this: You are having the wedding in the heart of your country’s dry season. You wake up to a forecast of zero percent chance of rain. And then, an hour before your outdoor wedding, the skies open into a downpour. I can’t say they were overjoyed, but they took it all in stride, just enjoying the day and their time together, and thankfully it stopped just in time for the ceremony.

Thank you both for caring so much for us throughout our entire stay in Trinidad. You showed us unmatched hospitality, having numerous overseas planning meetings with us, greeting us at our hotel on arrival and escorting us to the car at the end of your wedding. No other couple has ever done that on their wedding night! We will never forget your kindness, and the vibrancy of your family and friends. And we are so excited about the prospect of seeing you in New York again soon!

Tribeca Rooftop wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

We love so much about weddings that we would enjoy them wherever we are, but man is there something special about weddings in NYC, with their tremendous variety. Where else can you attend an event with posh fashion, heartbreaking emotion, and drag performers? Only at a wedding like Charlie and Max’s.

They lucked out with a gorgeous fall day, perfect for walking around the West Village and hopping on the 1 train down to TriBeCa to meet their massive, boisterous wedding party and on to TriBeca Rooftop, decorated to perfection by The Wild Bunch. In a nod to Charlie’s British heritage, half the wedding party were decked out in elaborate fascinators. Charlie and Max heightened the fashion themselves, with custom suitcoats and wedding bands and shoes they designed themselves.

The fantastic weather allowed for a touching ceremony on the rooftop and cocktail hour mingling, followed by a parade of heartfelt and hilarious speeches from friends and family. Then the party began, the energy brought by The Sugar Lane Band and even more toward the end of the night with drag performers joining the guests on the dance floor. An amazing day all over.