2018 has been full of lovely new friends, beautiful locations, and amazing experiences. As destination wedding photographers who’ve spent the year documenting these new friends, locations, and experiences…we often have the opportunity to enjoy the local culture of our destinations, all while creating relationships with amazing people. We have a pretty great job 😉 As the year wraps up, we have been reminiscing about our 2018 weddings, and we thought it might be fun to share some of our favorite things from 2018!
When we cover a wedding as destination wedding photographers, we want to cover the entire experience. We want to tell the whole story…start to finish. We like to start with the rehearsal dinner or pre-wedding activities. We’ll be honest…sometimes rehearsal dinners are not the *most* fun to shoot. Drinks and dinner at a local restaurant or bar is always a good time, and we LOVE having the opportunity to get to know the main characters for that weekend’s story, and photographing the rehearsal dinner gives our couples and their guests the opportunity to get more comfortable around us…but…shooting people eating isn’t exactly our most favorite thing;)
But sometimes you have couples who go a little further than just a dinner. We love that. So here are a few images from two of our very favorite rehearsal dinner experiences from 2018!
Amazing Rehearsal Dinner #1: Caroline & Todd – Camp Highlander, Mills River, NC
Funny story… We met Caroline & Todd in Mexico. They were engaged. When we asked where their wedding was, they said “Oh…at a camp in this little town in NC…you wouldn’t know it.” We said, “Try us.” We couldn’t have been more surprised when they told us the name of that camp and that tiny town…we know it well. We live about 10 minutes from there! Serendipity, for sure.
Caroline & Todd treated their wedding guests to a weekend at camp. We know what you’re thinking…okay, cool… a wedding at a camp. But no…that’s not what we mean. Caroline & Todd met as camp counselors at this camp when they were teenagers. When it came time to make their love official, they could think of nothing better than to spend an actual week experiencing camp with their people. We loved every minute of it!
Here is how they created an amazing personal experience for their guests:
step 1: have camp style dinner in the dining hall…with just a little bit of fancy thrown in 😉
step 2: ask everyone (particularly the adults) to get comfy, get a little tipsy (or a lot tipsy…we’re all adults here), and just play camp games for a little while.
step 3: make grown-ups play games that are usually played by children. prepare to laugh until you cry.
step 4: declare a winner!
Seriously…at the end of this night, we felt like we had truly experienced a night at summer camp, and we were so excited for the rest of the week. Fantastic way to start off a wedding weekend!
Amazing Rehearsal Dinner #2: Cori & Blake – Mount Gay Rum, Bridgetown, Barbados
When Cori & Blake told us that we were doing a local Barbados rum tour in lieu of a rehearsal dinner, we definitely did a little destination wedding photographer happy dance. (Don’t judge 😉 ) We love exploring local culture, and we REALLY love indulging in local libations. We are generally bourbon drinkers, but we were excited to expand our horizons a bit and indulge in some rum!
The whole process was seamless. From the lovely party bus driver to the fantastic rum experts at Mount Gay…the whole thing was an immersive experience.
step 1: pile all of your people onto a party bus. sit back, and enjoy the view.
step 2: arrive in a magical land of alcoholic bliss
step 3: learn the history of rum. taste some rum. taste some more rum.
step 4: learn how to make a rum cocktail from a rum master. (we were the lucky recipients of this cocktail…and we will agree that this gentleman was a rum master!)
step 5: attempt to make a rum cocktail yourself. winner gets more rum!
step 6: stumble your way back to the party bus. drive by Rihanna’s house. On Rihanna St. Head back to the resort for a nap before dinner 🙂
While our experience at camp taught us a lot about Caroline & Todd’s personal love story, our experience in Barbados taught us a lot about the place that Cori & Blake had brought us to as we celebrated their love story. These two experiences were very different in nature, but they appealed to us for the same reasons. We spent our time immersed in activity with our couples and their people. They were all comfortable with having our cameras in their faces, long before the wedding day pressure could set it.
We walked away from both of these events feeling like we had made some new friends and experienced some amazing new things. Complete win.
xoxo
ian & amber
destination wedding photographers
