A garden estate wedding

This one was built around the garden. A formal garden gives you architecture you do not have to invent: the hedges make lines, the pool makes a mirror, and the urns give you something to put a person beside so the scale reads.

We shot the wide frames early, while the light was still high enough to keep the box hedges green rather than black. Wide and small in the frame is a risk at a wedding because people want to see faces, so we paired every wide one with a close frame of the same moment.

The wind did most of the work on the veil. We did not ask for it once.

A formal garden is also a fast location to lose. The box hedges go from green to near black within about twenty minutes of the sun dropping below the tree line, so the wide frames have to be shot first and the close work saved for the flat light afterwards. We ran the family groups between the two, on the lawn in front of the house, which is the one place on the property where everybody could stand without anyone being hidden behind a hedge.