you can call me jess

Props to my younger self as a former engineer, who fell in love with digital technology. But more props to my newer (hopefully much cooler) self for rocking a wedding photography career since 2011, based less upon the technology and more about my love for telling your wedding story through said awesome digital gear. The endless wedding cake supply is also a serious perk.

My goals for your wedding day: I want to make you laugh. I want to lower your stress level. And I want to damn near kill myself in order to create some magic photos with you in the middle of them. I will get in that fountain for the shot. Watch me.

Want cookie cutter Pinterest photos recreated? I’m not for you.

I don’t do someone else’s wedding. I want to create YOURS. I want to show you your own WTF shots on the back of my camera throughout the day. No two weddings are the same, and your photographs should reflect that. I want to give my work of art to you in the form of what the bold moments feel like frozen, showcase the scenery that screams why you chose it, and emphasize images embedded with story and mood. Hell, people will be pinning YOUR photos.

Who am I? I am a trained photographer ready for you to trust me to wow the shit out of you.

P.S. Bonus points if your wedding is at a llama farm.

P.P.S. My permission slip to you: You’ve found your person. You’ve found your place. Now it’s time to stay the hell away from Pinterest.

I’m here to give you permission to not follow the herd of the detail-obsessed wedding industry as the base to your wedding photography. I’m here to give you permission to focus on what a wedding is truly about. I bet you can guess it’s not fairy lights, custom cookies, or matching bridesmaids robes.

Pause. Rewind. Simplify. And retrain your thinking coerced by photos on certain wedding Instagram accounts.

At the center of every wedding I’ve ever photographed, is a girl who fell in love with a boy. Or a boy who fell in love with a boy. A person who fell in love with a person.

You are the main characters of your wedding story. Not the wedding dress, not the invitations, not the things. It’s the people.

Then we add the guests. Your ride or die peeps. And boy do they know how to add some awesome supplemental chapters, a few heavily influenced by dance-floor-fuel tequila that I’m all for.

Because it’s real. The celebration of your love, the outcrying of your vows in public commitment to each other, and your circle witnessing and dancing their asses off is what I always see to focus on. I assure you that people look way cooler than shoe shots and escort cards. I promise you guests will remember what your ceremony felt like versus what the card box looked like. If you focus on that too, the rest will follow.

The details, the things, of your wedding will come naturally to you with this thinking. The wedding photos will flow like Hemingway on a typewriter that day as your moments unfold. I am trained to not miss a beat. Don’t stress, your details are also important to me because now they’re important to set the scene of your story in your wedding album book. And they’ll be photographed to compliment your message of exactly who you two are.

Here’s a couple questions to ask yourselves to aide in the planning of the things…

Why are you adding this? What does it mean to you? What do you want to remember from your day? Pick a few that you want to pop that scream you, but don’t feel like every category needs to be borrowed from a Pinterest highlight reel full of hundreds of fantasy weddings.

This is one wedding. Let it be yours. Strip it back. Simplify. Let it be purely you. And your photos will be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.