Alyssa+Ben // Montego Bay, Jamaica Wedding

WHAT IS BETTER THAN A LITTLE WEDDING IN JAMAICA?! A little wedding in Jamaica surrounded by some wonderful peeps who treat you like one of their own on an all-inclusive resort that regularly brings you pina coladas, that’s what. Alyssa and Ben are truly the best, and Alyssa is one of the few people that I can regularly text in all caps about everything, knowing that she’ll also text me back in all caps. I think all of our wedding e-mails also ended in about 50+ emojis. At first they started out tropical-themed, but then they degraded over time into completely random emojis for no reason since we had already used up all the tropical ones. Their senses of humor are already quite apparent to a lot of you who’ve seen their sneak peeks online but words still can’t accurately describe Alyssa and Ben and their entire group of people. They are wonderfully kind and thoughtful and everything good, but I appreciate their ridiculous humor the most. They played Toto through a fanny pack speaker system on a regular basis the entire week we were there (also Weezer covering Toto for good measure). All the bridesmaids got matching temporary butt tattoos, applied only after a thorough inspection of each individual to assess what the “best cheek” was and a group vote. There was some sort of “FWA FWA FWA” alarm noise that they’d all make in unison really loudly and for no discernible reason that I could understand but I appreciated nonetheless.

When we land these sorts of gigs everyone always asks how we did it, so here’s a small back story. Alyssa and Ben were connected and reconnected with us through Matt+Jamie who had their wedding in New York last year. I mistakenly identified Alyssa as a bridesmaid and kept asking her to do things for me (which she did because she’s nice), and I had actually gone to high school with Ben and Matt (they were a couple years younger than me). It was super nice to see Ben and Matt again, and I had thoroughly befriended Alyssa when I realized that her and Ben were together! We discussed nose piercings for a good while that evening, and then we got an e-mail asking us to go to Jamaica several months later. So, fellow wedding photographers, always ask wedding guests for help and then discuss nose piercings with them and also have gone to high school with their partners, and you’ll be in Jamaica in no time.

We went on tropical excursions! We jumped off probably unsafe cliffs into what was definitely unsafe pools of crystal blue waters! We climbed up 100% unsafe limestone rock waterfalls with like 5,000 other tourists! We sang the Fern Gully bat song. We listened to more Bob Marley than I would’ve ever thought humanly possible. We went snorkeling! At some point I was in some sort of on-resort night club dancing to that “boots with the fur” song wearing leggings with a composition notebook print. We searched high and low for carved wooden cats off-resort, only to be greeted by AN ENTIRE LOBBY FULL OF CARVED WOODEN CATS at the resort when we returned (Geoff would only let me take home two cats… a real shame… but they both got flagged at the airport). We kayaked! We waved our arms around some sort of glowing algae in a lagoon! We got stung by a lot of tiny microscopic jellyfish! We ate the best jerk chicken cooked by some dude wearing a chef’s hat who sat every day at the end of the beach with a giant grill! The adventures were endless and wonderful.

Alyssa and Ben – we love love love love you. Thank you for taking us on a trip of a lifetime and trusting us and going out to stand on sketchy rocks with us forever and ever amen. Keep texting us in all caps.

**GO PRO PHOTOS**


**REGULAR PHOTOS ON AN ACTUAL CAMERA**

Date: June 29, 2018
Ceremony + Reception Venue: Sunscape Cove, Montego Bay, Jamaica
Ben’s Occupation: Mechanical Engineer
Alyssa’s Occupation: Commercial Insurance Sales
How You Met: FACEBOOK — whaaaaat???
Interesting Fact: We both had animals named after Disney Movies before we even met…..then we continued with 2 cats and named them Rajah and Abu, like my favorite Disney movie Aladdin.
Honeymoon: BOCA RATON, FL — Aunt and Uncle are going to England for 2 weeks and we get the HOUSE FOR A WEEK!

Caitlyn+Jasmine // Santa Paula, CA Wedding // Limoneira Ranch

LEMONS AND LEMONS AND LEMONS and oh so many wonderful people exist in California, but none quite so great as Caitlyn+Jasmine. We happily and excitedly present to you our very first (of what we can only hope will be many more) California wedding. And our sneaking suspicions of how easy it is to be a photographer on the west coast have 100% been confirmed as literally every place we saw in Southern California was beautiful. But our job was especially easy because not only was our scenery gorgeous (lemons! mountains!) but our subjects were as well (Caitlyn! Jasmine!). You may remember them from their engagement session in Chapel Hill, NC where they gained many fans of their tattoos (we still get people who ask us about them). So how’d we get from North Carolina to California? Caitlyn was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time, and Jasmine was in NC after just finishing a master’s in Iceland when we did their session in Chapel Hill. But they both originally grew up in Southern California, and wanted to get married there before jet-setting off again to new and exciting places.

We are so lucky to have had a wedding out in CA, and also so lucky that the weather cooperated! After many fires in the area this past fall, Mother Nature decided to douse this particular area with rain surrounding the wedding. But luckily it cleared up for the wedding (yay!) and we were left with some beautiful haze. Limoneria Ranch is a wedding venue situated between acres and acres of citrus ranch land in California. It has mountains in the background and more lemons than you’ve ever seen. Also, lemons apparently come with a lot of thorns, which is something we quickly discovered when they kept piercing the soles of my shoes and going into my feet. Who knew? Probably every Californian reading this. I’ll wear more appropriate footwear next time. Besides beautiful mountains and all of the lemons, almost everyone at the wedding had a fun accent but us (they flew in from all over the world!). They were honored with adorable signs on all of the tables and the cutest bird-themed place cards we ever did see. Everyone danced the night away under the open sky and ate s’mores by a fire, and it was everything we thought a California wedding should be. We love you, Caitlyn and Jasmine! Thank you for introducing us to a bit of California life.

– Date: March 9, 2018
– Ceremony + Reception Venue: Limoneira Ranch // Santa Paula, CA
– First Dance Song: “I Love You Always Forever” – Betty Who
– Caitlyn’s Occupation: Public affairs sergeant/photojournalist for the US Army
– Jasmine’s Occupation: Fancy map stuff/researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Southeast Norway.
– How You Met: We were friends in high school, lived down the street from each other and got together our third year of college (despite going to colleges across the country from each other)
– Interesting Fact: We have explored 10 different countries together! Jasmine just finished studying volcanoes in Iceland for graduate school. She loves cheese, rabbits, and geography. Caitlyn can do 42 pushups in 2 minutes, and loves birds and craft beer.
– Honeymoon: New Zealand

Officiant: Denise Hayes (Jasmine’s step-mum)
DJ: DJ Keelez
Florist: Unique Floral Designs
Cake: The Butter End Cakery
Caterer: Plated Events by Chef Jason
Wedding Planner: Golden Poppy Events (Sara Beveridge)

Class of 2017.

Phew. Many of you know that this was a crap year for us. We had a significant death in the family, a laundry closet that was flooded, two cats in the emergency hospital, a computer that died, and a small kitchen fire that Carolyn valiantly extinguished… saving the lives of everyone in attendance. We blame 100% of the bad things that happened to us on a small wooden tiki carving we discovered under the dryer in said pre-flooded laundry closet, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, it sucked. We were hit with one thing after the other. But you know what didn’t suck? Our 2017 professional year. It ruled. Every single one of our clients was sane, kind, welcoming, pleasant, and fabulous in every way. We got hugs and thank you letters and toys for our cats and invitations to drinks and gatherings and copies of Hocus Pocus on DVD. You all took immense care of us this year when we needed it most, and we can’t thank you enough. You all were a very special class indeed, and we’re glad to see you graduate ::sheds tear::. I’m not sure where you’re graduating to… but… come back and visit us, please. We love each and every one of you. Thanks for making a bad year have tremendously good moments.

The year end “Class Of” posts date back to 2011.

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2011