Two families accompanied by close friends traveled from parts all over to celebrate the love and marriage of Natasha and Brian in a 143 year old mansion located in the heart of the garden district in New Orleans known as the Elms Mansion. It was the perfect setting for their beautiful and joyous celebration. A second line, led by New Orleans’ best The Kinfolk Brass Band, started the party off right with a tradition unique only to New Orleans as revelers stomped and paraded down St. Charles underneath the century old oak trees. Natasha’s mother regaled guests with stories of her pregnancy with Natasha during the Chernobyl disaster and other hilarious as well as sentimental personal stories. The party continued with an awesome hora that had nearly everyone in attendance ending up in a chair high above everyone’s head.
Algeirs Point Wedding - Josh & Julia
We love those weddings full of really great vibes and really good people. It's the kind of place when as soon as you get there you can feel the warmth, and you just smile. It's the kind of wedding we love to attend, it reminds us of all the great memories in life and where they all began on our journey together.
Underneath the gorgeous oak tree at Compass Point Events, Josh and Julia celebrated their love to one another. It was perfect. They stood together under a beautiful handmade chuppah, hand in hand as their closest friends and family experienced it with them.
It was an amazing celebration between two beautiful people and we are incredibly thankful to have been able to document it for them. Don't just take our word for it, check out their story below.
Uptown New Orleans Wedding - Madeline & Jared
We've got a certain emotional attachment to the kind of wedding where families come together in celebration of two peoples love for one another.
Madeline and Jared took us on a roller coaster of feel good emotions from the second we arrived to her at The Ponchatrain Hotel. Madeline wanted to have some alone time with her father, and we she did, the room was just overflowing with happiness. Madeline's entire family waited for her on at the roof top bar, including her 90 year old grandmother. It was just incredible.
Across town, Jared waited in anticipation with his family at The Audubon Tea Room. Seeing each other for the first time in the garden was amazing. For us it's difficult to describe the emotions in these kind of moments, they make you feel warm inside and nothing else matters.
The ceremony was so heart felt and full of joy. Grandparents and parents, friends and family all mixed together holding hands, hugging, cuddling, crying and kissing. It was overwhelming in the best possible way.
In typical New Orleans fashion, they completed their commitment to one another with a second line into their reception. BRW played an amazing set throughout the entire night. Y'all everyone danced, and I mean everyone including Madeline's grandmother. It was awesome, they ended the night by busting out the Tea Room doors cheering, shouting and being present in the moment.
New Orleans Wedding - Jimmy & Adrienne
The best weddings, are the one's that really make you work for it. The type of wedding where everyone is an absolute mess of emotions, filled with the best people laughing, loving and crying their eyes out. It's freaking rad. It's what we live for.
Jimmy and Adrienne gave us that full experience when they got married back in November., and left us leaving with what Adrienne called it, a "healthy sweat", and some very awesome new friends.
Their emotion filled, love packed ceremony at Our Lady of the Rosary was incredible. Jimmy and Adrienne both had these amazingly awesome smiles throughout, and you could just tell that they were having the time of their lives. That raw excitement of just being present in the moment carried over ten fold when we made our way over to Pat O'Brien's on the River for one hell of a dance party.
We had an incredible time, one that left us feeling crazy tired, sweaty and probably a little smelly, but we wouldn't trade that experience with them for the world.
Thank you Jimmy & Adrienne! Stay awesome!
New Orleans Elopement - Kait & Alex
Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving, and we took a long hard look at what we're thankful for. One of the most important things that we constantly find ourselves being thankful for is our clients. Without them, we wouldn't the career of our dreams. Kait and Alex are the exact kind of people, clients, and friends that we absolutely love and are ever thankful for.
There is a real soft spot in our hearts for the type of weddings that aren't focused on all the bells and whistles, but instead focus on the emotion, the love, and the intimacy of the couple.That was certainly the case with Kait and Alex's elopement at the iconic Napolean House located in the heart of the French Quarter.
Their celebration of love for one another was downright heart-filling and out-right incredible. When we're able to show up to a wedding and really capture the exact way the couple feels about one another without having to be rushed off into other segments of a wedding, to take it slow and just really feel what they feel for one another, that's just incredibly rare and it's one of the best feelings in the world.
We could write all day about how incredible these two are, but it still wouldn't do them any justice. The photographs we were able to create, the moments we were able to capture, they're as real as it gets and that's all we'll ever need to say about these two.
Thank you for the experience Kait and Alex, y'all are freaking amazing!
French Quarter Wedding - Jackie & Cody
This wedding, the one you're about to relive, has to be one of the most crazy, love filled, and emotional weddings that we've ever had the privilege of photographing.
It started on the Thursday before the wedding. We got the announcement that a hurricane, the first week of October, was rolling in the gulf and headed straight for New Orleans. In my head, I was like, "oh that's just fucking perfect." We had been looking forward to Jackie and Cody's wedding for months, these two amazing people were coming in with all their family and friends from Chicago, and it was the first to kick off our season.
The girls at Unique Weddings & Events, kept it together like the professionals they are and made sure everything went off without a hitch, despite having to move the entire wedding up. The city of New Orleans issued a mandatory curfew in the city that forced everyone to be closed up at 5 pm. That totally threw things, considering their ceremony was set to start for 6pm.
Nothing stops New Orleans from having a party, not even a hurricane, and so we made do and it turned out even better than I had ever expected.
Jackie and Cody shared their love for one another inside of a beautifully candle lit Broussard's. There were so many tears and emotions, the love, the passion it filled the room with the best vibes ever. This is the kinda' stuff we live for, the kind of people we love to be around. Thank you Jackie and Cody, y'all are amazing!
New Orleans Elopement - Dee & Rome
If there is any one thing that New Orleans does well, is that it shows it's visitors a really great time. It's our nature, it's our soul and it's in our blood.
New Orleans also knows how to put on for a wedding, and that's exactly what it did for Dee and Rome. The two of them roamed the city after running away and getting married in the lushcourtyard garden of The Royal Sonesta, and at every turn were greeted like family. The cheer and love was certainly felt with their huge smiles and passion for each other.
Even though we're natives and totally biased, we think that Dee and Rome made an excellent choice in celebrating their love for one another down south in one of the most romantic, laid back and fun filled cities in America.
Whether your wedding has 300 people or just 2, New Orleans is certainly going to show you a good time.
Bourbon Street Wedding - Lauren & Otis
If there is anything New Orleans does better than anywhere else, it's throwing a party, and food, and culture, and music, and well just about everything else.
In typical New Orleans fashion, Lauren and Otis threw one of the most amazing weddings we've ever had the pleasure of documenting. They embraced NOLA in it's entirety with a laid back informal ceremony that really let their love for each other and their amazing personalities shine, and then followed that up with our favorite NOLA tradition, the second line. If you don't let yourself experience a second line when you're visiting New Orleans, than let me just say, you are doing it wrong. And if you're gonna' have experience a second line, you're going to want to make sure that Kinfolk Brass Band is there to lead the way.
The second line is an incredible experience, but it's only an appetizer for a true New Orleans wedding. You roll into the venue, in this case it was amazing Petite Bourbon, still high from the brass band parading you through the streets and you just let loose. You grab your friends, loved ones, and you let the good times roll.
That's how you get married in NOLA.
New Orleans Botanical Garden Wedding - Corey & Sophie
These two were by far one of my favorite couples that I've had the pleasure to photograph. After photographing their engagement session on a whim, they decided to ditch the family friend who they had planned to have photograph their wedding and gave us the honor of doing so.
We were floored. These two are some of the nicest, down to earth people I've ever met, and their love for one another fills the air around them in the best of ways.
Their wedding at the gorgeous New Orleans Botanical Gardens was full of love and smiles throughout the day. The weather was terrible earlier that day, but it's like the heaven's knew that these two were getting married and cleared out with a gorgeous sunset for these two love birds.
Cheers to our new friends and the awesomest of people, Corey and Sophie!
New Orleans Elopement - Tim & Nichole
Tim & Nichole decided to sneak away from their home in Houston to New Orleans and elope, and I can't even begin to tell you how honored and excited I was to have been the only person aside from their son Levi to have been in attendance. What made the day even more special was this romantic and intimate fog that lingered over the city, the atmosphere was just right for an elopement in the heart of the French Quarter.
Photographing weddings in New Orleans is fantastic, but when you get an amazing couple like these two who just wanted to sneak away and just be together, you know it's going to be something special. Throughout the entire day you could just feel the love and happiness between them, and it was infectious.
My face actually hurt afterwards from smiling and laughing with them all day, and their son Levi was a blast to hang out with as well. I feel absolutely privileged to have been able to tell your story.
