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Hot on the heals of the Banff wedding we did for Jordan and Leanne is a Banff engagement with fun couple Samson and Donna. Kudos to them for braving the cold for the outside photos! That wind was a killer!

We started out in the Bow Falls area before heading to the Fairmont Banff Springs to shelter from the wind and also get some indoor portraits. Samson and Donna are great dancers and we were able to get the Mount Stephen Ballroom totally to ourselves. (I’ve never seen that before!) So Samson got to twirl Donna all around around whole the floor—a private moment in a normally very public place. It was pretty cool, actually.

We only had a limited time for this engagement session, so we made the best use of the nearby areas around the Mount Stephen Ballroom for the whole time we were there. Donna and Samson were a great, open couple and I really look forward to their wedding day.

Congrats to Jonathan and Sora, who were married recently in Calgary! We did a fun engagement session with them last February and I’ve been looking forward to their wedding since then.

These guys had two wedding ceremonies, both of them traditional ceremonies, though they were each very different. Jonathan has Ukrainian and Irish heritage and so the first ceremony was a traditional Ukrainian Orthodox ceremony at the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary church, which has to be the most ornate and decorative church I have seen in Calgary. It’s stunning! This ceremony was followed by a traditional Korean ceremony in the church’s basement and it was completely different in so many ways. It was a kind of organised chaos from the photographer’s perspective. For one thing the guests were standing up fairly close to the small stage area where Sora and Jonathan were and often I had to weave through people to find a new position. And there were so many different and fun traditions, too, such as family members tossing small items of food to Jonathan and Sora that they had to catch in a large piece of cloth. It was certainly an energetic ceremony.

After the ceremonies and the family photos we headed off for photos. We took a few around some old sandstone ruins for a while before going back to the Hotel Arts, where we did casual images without any real setup or posing, other than for the final image of Sora, where we went for a more stylish vibe. These guys were very cool to work with and, although we had to work quickly because of time, we did get a good variety of images.

Their reception was across the road from the Hotel Arts at the Endevour Arts gallery and this venue, like the one in the last blog entry, had been stylishly decorated with the guidance of Lisa Hanslip from The Wedding Planner. We weren’t officially covering the reception, though they had kindly invited us there for dinner. Thanks for having us at your wedding and all the best, guys.

Lots of candid, photojournalistic stuff for the blog this week!

Corrick and Katherine were married in Waterton on a beautiful Alberta day.  It was amazing how well the weather and other things worked out for us; we had breeze when we wanted it and no breeze when it would have been a problem.  

This was a sort of destination wedding.  :)  That is, it was a destination wedding for many of the guests, who flew in from England and New Zealand to be with Corrick and Katherine.  Sometimes it seemed like Sherri was the only person with a regular Canadian accent!  

Corrick and Katherine were both wonderful people, happy and not afraid to express their feelings.  We have lots of photos of them with their emotions written clearly on their faces and there were tears from both of them before the end of the day.  When I was taking photos of Corrick right after he was ready I asked to do one of him looking serious.  ”Don’t smile”, I said.  ”Just look at me with a relaxed, neutral expression”.  Corrick looked up and grinned.  ”Umm, can you try for a more serious expression?  Not smiling this time.”  Corrick looked down and composed himself.  Then he looked up at me and you will see his not-smiling, serious expression in the images below.  ;)

They had awesome wedding rings, too!  The rings were custom made for them by the same company that made the actual rings for The Lord of the Rings movies in New Zealand.  There were many other cool things throughout the day that reflected their unique personalities. 

The atmosphere of the day was full of celebration and the reception was one of the less formal ones we’ve been to, in the sense that it felt as though everyone in the whole room was involved and not just sitting and listening from a distance.  

Sherri and I wish the happy couple all the best and I’m hoping that now that Corrick is living closer to Katherine’s parents, Bert will one day perfect his English accent.