This St. Louis couple wanted a “really, really good photographer.” Hawes Photography was the obvious choice, and the result is intoxicating. I’ve spent all morning engrossed in the images of this intimate, and very special, wedding and I haven’t had enough yet. Hawes Photography was able to capture the emotions of the day spectacularly – I am in love with this couple because of their wedding day. Make sure to check out the rest in the full image gallery – but be warned, you’ll get lost in the love this couple is emanating!

We chose to do a wedding in which every part of the ceremony was meaningful to us. If it wasn’t meaningful to us personally, we didn’t do it. This meant that we wrote and emceed the ceremony ourselves and had a total of 13 guests (plus a stray dog), who sat in a semi-circle and each spoke during the wedding. Our guests were our closest family members–the people who would find our ceremony as significant and meaningful as we did. To us, marriage is both a very private and a community affair, so we wanted people who would be an active part of our married life to be a part of our wedding.

Throughout the wedding process, we made sure to stay true to ourselves. At the end of the day, we were the ones getting married, and we were the ones to whom every choice would matter the most. Plus, our parents got to plan the receptions that came a few months later, so they could funnel all of their own preferences into those. Also, we tried not to sweat the small stuff or fall prey to the belief that more extravagant is always better. Matching dresses and hair, decorations, and seating arrangements wouldn’t have made the day any more special to us. Nor would anything more expensive than we chose. (Some good resources for others trying to decipher what elements of weddings are truly meaningful to them are the books Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert and A Short History of Marriage by Ethel Urlin.)

One aspect of the wedding that was very important to us from the get-go was having a really, really good photographer. We wanted more than anything to remember the emotions we and our families felt on that day, and the best way to do that was to get the kind of photographer that captures people as they are, not people as they look. I think you will agree that our wish was more than fulfilled.

In fact, the whole day was absolutely perfect. And every bit our dream wedding.

Photography: Hawes Photography / Venue: Old Orchard Gallery / Hair & Makeup: Dominic Michael Salon

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