westchester wedding

Le Chateau South Salem wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

Usually our highest compliment for a wedding is “Boy, I wish I’d been a guest!” But our assistant Brendan did us one better in his assessment of Lauren and Taylor’s wedding. As we packed up, he said “Well, I don’t need to plan a wedding now — this was perfect in every way, I’ll just do this one.” There are, of course, a few more stages in wedding planning than just saying “Give me the Lauren and Taylor!” but it shows what a fantastic experience this day was, partially due to the fine work of Le Chateau but also because of the great spirit and kindness of their friends and family (which are probably not part of the package.)

Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill Mansion wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

We’ve been having some fun this winter revisiting weddings, given that one of the fun things about wedding work is that it can be constantly re-interpreted. We shoot and deliver a huge amount of photos — indeed, events are the only sort of photography where it matters how good the 500th-best photo you took in a single day was. Over the course of your life, you can divvy up your photos in different ways — photos you want to put in a gorgeous album or big on your wall; photos you want to put on Facebook to show off the fun your friends had; photos your parents will put on their fridge. But also you can come back to photos and see them in different ways — with the number of photos in a wedding, it’s like that each time you will see a photo that feels like a welcome surprise.

And so we come back to Amanda and Mitchell’s wonderful wedding at the Tappan Hill Mansion to show a different way to view the images — entirely in black and white. We actually give black and white copies of each wedding photo we deliver, and it’s a great way to make it feel fresh and tell the story in new ways. Here we feel that the tone highlights the deeply felt emotion of the day.

We hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed revisiting this day!

FEAST at Round Hill wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

We have had many different sorts of connections and ongoing relationships with our clients, but Gina’s is unique: She is the only person whose wedding we photographed who was also a vendor at our wedding. And appropriately for a venue officially named “FEAST,” she was in charge of our fantastic catering team from CxRA.

We knew Gina was a powerhouse, but we had also been won over by Pat’s easygoing nature and broad smile during their engagement shoot. But the wedding exceeded even our high expectations, from its beauty to the raucous fun of the reception to, yes, the food.

The fantastic Jashim Jalal gave us invaluable assistance at this wedding.

Whitby Castle wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

The Whitby Castle is a beautiful stately venue with many gorgeous features, but Alyssa had her sights set on one in particular: a beautiful, gigantic tree in the middle of the property that can be integrated into the ceremony as the starting point of the procession. She loved that idea, and wanted to expand on it — also using the expansive interior of the tree (larger than most New York apartments) as a spot for the first look.

Only one problem: Alyssa was terribly allergic to the tree, and couldn’t be anywhere near it.

But where there is a will (and modern medicine) there is a way. We respect anyone willing to load themselves up on anti-histimines and anti-inflammatories to achieve their vision for the wedding day.

And what a vision: The day was not only beautiful but a relentlessly fun celebration of their connection to each other, friends and family. These were their favorite memories, particularly the apex of such celebrations: The horah.  "Being surrounded (literally) by all of our family and friends dancing was a great way to start off the amazing party,” said Alyssa, “I remember smiling all night."

Lyndhurst Castle wedding /  by Ryan Brenizer

One of the ways Allie and Luke express their love is through regular dance-offs in their home … and it showed. Their Lyndhurst Castle wedding was not only incredibly beautiful, but ridiculously, incredibly fun. You know you’re in for a good time when an extremely elegant long-sleeve wedding gown is traded in for a party outfit specifically designed for maximum get-downage.

This is one of those weddings where I feel like each word I say is just a road block between you and photos of a deeply emotional, completely gorgeous day. I could tell you about the importance they place on family, but it’s more important that you see that in their every action. I could tell you the weather was perfect, but … well in that case I’d be lying. It was raining hard in the morning and I had to pull my full-fledged weather geek card to provide some calm and promise that the 37 weather forecasts I read every morning all agreed that there was a zero percent chance of rain by ceremony time, so there was no need to cancel their dreams of an outdoor ceremony.

(Thank you, assorted weather forecasters, for getting that right. I had to stick my neck out a bit on that one.)