This is the 5th wedding I’ve shot with Scott Nelson. This wedding was the closest to home I have ever been, Laguna Beach. I met up with Scott around 11am at Laguna Beach Inn to shoot the bride getting ready. That was pretty easy; just had to hump the gear around for him so that he didn’t have to. Then we moved on to the ceremony site which was behind a very nice restaurant with an awesome view of the beach. We gathered the Bridal party and took them all over to a nice lookout not far from the restaurant.
Scott started all the different combinations. Bride alone, bride with each bridal party member, then a group shot. Just as we finished with that, we heard a ton of fire trucks. They all stopped in front of the restaurant that the ceremony and reception were going to be held. Turns out there was an electrical fire in the kitchen and they had to kill the power to the whole place, which knocked out the speaker system for the ceremony, as well as the lights for at night. Oh yeah, and to top it off, they had to block the entrance to the ceremony site with Fire Line Tape for about a good half an hour. Scott and I used it to our advantage. Scott took pictures of the groomsmen in front of the fire trucks and in front of the Fire Line tape. It made a great picture (see the sideshow below)
After all the chaos, we were finally able to move to the ceremony. It was a great time of day–nice breeze, sun shining. My job for the ceremony was to shoot all the pictures from a higher level, so I was posted upstairs and took pictures of the bridal party walking down the steps to the ceremony. It made great shots, and a lot of them were used in the sideshow (link below).
After the ceremony, Scott took the couple along with the bridal party and parents to the same place we shot the bride. We did every possible combination then did the group shot. We sent the everyone back to the reception except for the couple so we could do some nice portraits. The one thing about being a wedding photographer’s assistant/second camera is that everything you own and are wearing at the time is expendable. I say that because there were some shots that Scott wanted that required the couple to sit on the wood deck, but the bride didn’t want her dress dirty, so off comes my expensive coat and on the floor it goes to be sat on. I didn’t care; I just thought it was funny.
After all that fun, we move on to the reception. It’s my favorite time! Why? … Because that’s when we can eat. I was starving, and it was a buffet! It doesn’t get any better than that. I think I had around three plates of food. Right when we finished, they started the speeches, and then moved on to the first dance which was nice. It was around sunset. The rest of the night was the dancing. That was my favorite thing to shoot. We had to leave the reception early, so that we could shoot their hotel room. It was prepped with roses all over the place, champaign, and dramatic lighting. After that, it was about 11pm and we were done!
