shadowland wedding photographer

Dave & Tiffany // St. Joseph Wedding Photographer // Shadowland Ballroom Wedding

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Short Version:
- Gale force winds!
- Power outage all over town, oh no!
- Moved ceremony indoors, thank God because it POURED!
- Fire department came, kicked us all out for a while because of a gas leak
- DJ was awesome getting a generator in time (http://www.djjimmyrock.com)
- The planner was amazing and the glue that calmly held the day together. I remember as he was smiling telling us some bad news I said “sooo, are you dying inside yet? hahaha” (http://holdenmichaelevents.com)
- Tiffany and Dave were the best and didn't let any of this take them down.
- Their friends and family were also the best. Everyone was so nice and happy and those are the kind of people you really want in your life!
- Honestly, I love weddings like this. It shows who people are and it’s an honor to be a part of preserving their memories from a day with so many great stories!
- Oh let’s not forget that incredible Hayley Paige dress! 😍

Long Version:

This wedding is the ultimate example of why having a good attitude and a good team of vendors is SO important!
You can dream, hope and pray all you want, but you never have control of the weather or other random things and that can change everything immediately. We’ve experienced a lot of things in our 10 years of business, plenty of rainy days, hurricanes, ect. but this day just had it all!

The weather on Friday was perfect. The weather on Saturday…well…the words “gale force winds” was very accurate. I’ve never experienced winds quite like this at a wedding before! It was so intense! The wind made it cold but we’ve been cold plenty of times. There were little tornados of leaves and trash flying around everywhere and don’t even get me started on what it does to hair! hahah I felt like I was going to blow away several times. The key to working in the wind is to work with it because if you do it right, it gives an amazing sense of movement which is my favorite thing!

But oh if it was only the wind, haha! That is really just the beginning. The power went out all over town, they had to move the ceremony to the reception venue since it was outside and it POURED rain during the ceremony. There was some sort of gas leak concern at the venue so the fire department had to come and kicked everyone out of the building until they could make sure everything was safe and then once all of those things happened I was like well what else could happen at this point?! hahah thats when the planner, Holden, told us we were on borrowed time. Honestly, he was so collected and calm I thought he was joking at first.

The fire department said that once all the emergency exit signs went out, we all had to leave the building. So we were like GET ALL THE THINGS DONE! When we lost the first sign, I felt a sense of doom haha

The carousel obviously didn’t work without power so we did some shutter drag images to try and give it a sense of movement. You can either be bummed about no power or make your own movement one way or another!

But here’s the thing. This wedding was AMAZING. I love these photos, I love my memories, I love this couple and I couldn’t be more proud of how this day went.

Life is not perfect. Just when you think you’ve been hit with plenty of things going wrong, 10 more things happen. There’s no escaping it sometimes. The only thing you can do is stay calm, be a problem solver and move forward. Having a good sense of humor I also find to be helpful :)

The DJ arrived early enough that he had time to quickly jump into problem solving mode and was able to find and go get a generator so he could run his stuff all night. Without that quick thinking, I can’t even imagine what a bummer that reception would have been! Instead it was awesome and we got so many great dancing shots and everyone had a blast!

Not all our weddings have planners but I am so thankful Tiffany hired Holden! He was so on top of things, so calm, had a great sense of humor about it all and was just wonderful to work with. I can’t recommend him enough!

I don’t recall being stressed at this wedding. Because of a good team, good attitudes and a couple that handled each piece of crazy news like champs, it was such a peaceful day oddly enough. A good attitude goes A LONG WAY!

When Ryan and I got engaged all our plans got messed up (If you have never heard that story, you can read about it here: http://www.mudeyes.com/i-engaged-her/) even though he had great plans, what it came down to was pulling off the road into a car dealership and this happened “I didn’t really want to propose to you in a car but this is what we have been dealt. I am going to love you even when things aren’t perfect and things don’t work out as planned. And I asked her to marry me. And she said, “I would marry you if we were covered in mud” =)”

Tiffany and Dave, I think you guys are mud people too. I’m so glad we were able to be a part of this day and give you these images to help remember all the things! Nothing can stop you guys from having a great time together!

You guys - if you need a planner or DJ - HIRE THESE PEOPLE.
http://holdenmichaelevents.com
http://www.djjimmyrock.com

Mary & Steven // St. Joesph Wedding Photographer // Shadowland Ballroom

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Ryan has known the Mulder family for a long time since he used to work construction with them in Kalamazoo. We even shot Mary’s senior pictures back in the day and her sisters wedding a few years back. So when we heard Mary was engaged I was like ohhhhh yeeessss!

When we met Steve through a FaceTime call, we thought he was a cool guy but as we got to know him better on the wedding day, we really got to see how much he adores her and thats my favorite kind of dude. I like Mary so much because she speaks her mind and has such a great laugh. The laughers are always the best!

It was such an awesome day with great families, awesome people, beautiful weather and incredible diamonds. You can’t forget the diamonds! hahah I literally gasped when I saw her ring and started imagining what I would end up doing with it and boy oh boy do I love my ring shots in this one!