Anissa & Craig | Nemacolin Weddings
Boy oh boy do I have a lovely, intimate, sweet, romantic wedding to share with you today. Truly, this is probably one of our most favorite weddings this year and can I tell you....it was a wedding of 7. No there was no typo there. Seven.
I got an email in my inbox on September 3rd asking if we were available for a wedding on October 18. Yep--Anissa was a little late in the game but I immediately liked her because in her initial inquiry she made the point to state that there would be tons of red wine on her wedding day. Ahhhhh....a gal after my own heart. It was kismet.
A few fun and quirky emails later, we were making plans for the drive up to Nemacolin Woodlands Resort to photograph Anissa & Craig in the teeny tiny chapel on the grounds. It was absolutely beautiful...even though the minister kept calling Craig "Greg", and even after he was corrected, by Greg. ;-) But before all the vows and kisses, I got to spend a bit of time with Anissa while she got ready and John did the same with Craig in the "locker room" at the Falling Rock hotel at Nemacolin. I put "locker room" in quotes because they seriously need to come up with a better word for this space. Dark cherry wood lockers from floor to ceiling, several living room areas, a full bar, a centered pillar with large flat screen tv's circling it....wow. And although Anissa didn't get ready in the ladies "locker room" I just had to see it. My new address as of this week will now be the "locker room" at Falling Rock. I am moving in. Period.
Of course Anissa & Craig had a First Look. An intimate day calls for an intimate moment and we were thrilled to capture it. Funny thing about couples...in my experience, when presented with an awkward romantic situation (such as seeing your future spouse for the first time on your wedding day, sharing an intimate moment together while 2 photographers, albeit at a distance, click away to capture said intimate moment) a lot of couples move outward from each other as a reaction to the awkwardness. It's like a protective reaction: you point your camera at me to capture an intimate moment, I move away from the intimate moment as a protective reaction to make you stop. They don't even realize they're doing it. I immediately noticed that instead of moving outward from each other, Anissa & Craig immediately moved inward to each other for that protective cover. The moment they released themselves from their intimate moment, their protective reaction was to get closer to each other. A.w.e.s.o.me.
And it became clear: Anissa and Craig were not having a wedding on this day; they were having a marriage. And we were the lucky duck photographers that got to capture it all.
