I’ve done work for the Downtown Raleigh Alliance for many years, and I still get asked questions about what they do for the city. The DRA is responsible for fun events that happen downtown (like First Friday, Downtown Raleigh Restaurant Week, and partnering with local artists to decorate storefronts and make murals) but they also provide Ambassador services! These (and many more) friendly folks wearing blue DRA ambassador logos patrol downtown, helping locals and visitors. They keep an eye on the cars in parking garages, provide directions and assistance, check on shop owners and local businesses, and they even jump your car for free if you need it! If you’re downtown late at night and would like an escort back to your car, you can call them and they’ll walk with you. They provide an immense and helpful service. I was happy to photograph the ambassadors in their new uniforms this year!
We are so lucky to have come across the paths of Nicole and Ben via one of our previous wedding clients, Katie+Tony. And we’re even luckier that both of those couples (whose weddings were out of state), now live in Durham! We love them all. When we had our first Skype meeting with Nicole and Ben, the first thing I noticed was her admirable forearm tattoo of their dog wearing a flower crown and I liked her instantly. Ben didn’t have a tattoo of their dog wearing a flower crown but I liked him too. Recently we had a chance to catch up at dinner and we realized that we have many things in common, and that Nicole actually has many tattoos. She also did the brilliant move of suggesting that we visit Salem, MA when we were up in Boston, and because of her incredible suggestion, I now have a Lost Boys dress and also four humongous art prints of bats dressed like old timey gentlemen hanging in our living room. We loved it. We also visited Fenway and got a foam finger for our baseball foam finger collection.
Anyway, we also had a wonderful time at Nicole and Ben’s wedding! It was windy, which I LOVE – shooting in the wind is a ton of fun and adds a lot of movement and is generally regarded by me as awesome – and we got to walk around really neat, historic spots of Boston that I’ve missed on previous trips. It’s beautiful! And they got married in an old jail (fun!) and had donuts and green glassware and specially grown peonies and all sorts of other glorious things. Plus Ben got Nicole custom portraits of their dogs as a wedding gift that delighted her to tears (literally). And now we have two new friends who like food and animals and cocktails.
Date: June 15, 2019
Ceremony+Reception Venue: The Liberty Hotel // Boston, MA
First Dance Song: “Crazy Love” – Van Morrison
Nicole’s Occupation: Human Resources
Ben’s Occupation: Finance
How You Met: We met through work and sparked our love for each other with a first kiss at The Pinhook in Durham.
Interesting Facts: We LOVE to travel and between us have been to Belize, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico and the British Virgin Islands with many more trips on the horizon.
Honeymoon: Martha’s Vineyard immediately following the wedding with a longer trip (Croatia?) in 2020.
Officiant: Kezia Bacon
Band: Ripcord
Florist: Wild dahlia
Donuts: Kane’s Donuts of Boston
Caterer: The Liberty Hotel
Hair+Makeup: ZenaRose
Videographer: Armor in Motion Films
Coordinator: Keri Ketterer Walter of Always Yours Events
Sarah and Dustin are the best type of people. They like card games and video games and pie picnics, but most importantly, they can weather an extremely rainy engagement session without so much as blinking an eye. The weather is so unpredictable in North Carolina in the summer, and we had already rescheduled once due to rain. The forecast for their particular day was about evenly split, but toward the evening it was down to almost a zero percent chance, and nothing on the radar. Of course, because of this, it rained literally the entire time. For no reason. The radar still said it was clear, and the forecast still said it was not supposed to be raining. It did not let up. It was primarily a constant mist, but it did become heavier on occasion, but despite all this, they did not complain once, and were some of the happiest clients I’ve had, rain or shine! They met in the Archives while attending school, and are getting married later this year on Dustin’s family’s land in Tennessee. They’re excited to later bring Sarah’s dog Moses into the mix (who’s currently living with her family in New Mexico) and vow to continue to remain united over their love of desserts. I’m super happy to have done their engagement session, and can’t wait to see what life has in store for them in future. Congrats, Sarah and Dustin!