While my wedding photography studio, Twisted Oaks, has already postponed over 30 weddings that were scheduled between March and September of this year, we have been doing everything we can to help ease our clients’ disappointment and help them navigate through these tough times. We have had a few plan for smaller, more intimate style weddings at their homes with less than 10 people while keeping a safe social distance from everyone. Most of them ended up deciding it was better (for everyone) to reschedule everything until a later date in 2021. However, I did have two clients that decided they didn’t want to wait another year and wanted to hold a very small backyard ceremony at a family home. After living in quarantine for the past couple of months I have to say, it felt pretty special to be part of and I’m glad they still had me come and shoot it. The wedding was in PA and since my studio is in NJ, I made sure that I looked up the PA pandemic guidelines for COVID-19 and all their rules on social distancing. Without hesitation, I can tell you that the ceremony itself as well as everyone in attendance followed the the PA state and county pandemic guidelines and I was more than comfortable being part of it.

With the guidelines in mind, as well as the safety of myself and my own family, there was a lot of prep on my part so that I went in with the right mindset. Not only coming up with solid game plan on how I could keep myself and the small number of family members at the ceremony safe and feeling comfortable with me there, but also how I would still go about capturing everything as creatively as possible. Once I got there, I threw my mask on before I even got out of my truck, grabbed all my gear, I walked up to meet everyone. Reality quickly set in as I introduced myself at a “pandemic style socially acceptable distance”. Even though I was anticipating this exact scenario, the reality of it was a quick reminder of just how different this was going to be. I shook it off and let everyone know that I was more than happy to be there, which I was. Especially, as it was easily see just how happy Grace and Eric were to be getting married, pandemic aside. There were 9 people total in attendance, including myself, and it was comforting to see that even family members who hadn’t been living through this quarantine under the same roof were keeping a solid 6 feet from one another throughout the entire time I was there.

The ceremony was in a backyard with the ceremony being live streamed via Zoom on multiple phones and tablets giving multiple points of view. It was a short but beautiful ceremony and was really cool to see all the emotion from those who weren’t in attendance physically but still able to feel part of it all through the live feed. Grace’s father wasn’t able to make it to the ceremony so she held her iPhone as she walked down the green grass isle with him on Facetime. As she met Eric just in front of the huppah, she handed him the phone for her father to say a few words to him officially giving his daughter away along with his approval. A pretty unique and special way to get a wedding ceremony started.

Afterwards, I hung around a little to grab some photos of them in the yard, shooting a little further away than I typically would. I used my 35, 50, and 105 primes on the SL2 and even though I had to approach things a little differently (while wearing a mask) it really wasn’t a big deal and it felt good to be shooting again. The sun was shining bright without a cloud in the sky which I couldn’t have been happier about and I made the decision to not even open my lighting bag. It gave me the perfect excuse to push things creatively with just natural light, something I talked about recently in an IG interview with Leica Store Las Vegas. Being limited to a backyard with nothing but grass, surrounded by other houses, made for a welcomed challenge to have thrown at me. Mentally, I needed it. I needed to feel that pressure again. I struggled at first and really had to just calm my mind down, but I was able to walk away feeling pretty good with what I was able to capture.

I sent them these photos the next day and they immediately let me know how much they loved them which was all I needed to hear. I left that day feeling extremely thankful, grateful, and 100% comfortable with how everything went as far as social distancing and the fear of storm troopers showing up to take us all away. (My 6 year old has been obsessed with Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back)

I don’t know how many more of these I’ll end up doing but I wanted to share some of the shots with everyone (with Grace and Eric’s permission) to show how happy the two of them were that they decided to have a Coronavirus backyard wedding ceremony. Looking forward to seeing them again this September for the rest of their celebration when hopefully they will be able to see a lot more of their family and friends in person rather than on the screen of an iPhone. Enjoy!