Sooo, I had a lovely time in New York back in May! AND I went ALONE too!

But lets back it up for a second…

I was sitting in this very chair when a woman named Alexa messaged me from… you guessed it! New York! She had just explained to me that her sister was getting married and she wanted ME to photograph the wedding. (shocked, and almost falling off my chair) I thought she was kidding. This was going to be such an amazing opportunity to fly to New York and photograph a wedding!

After a few long months of waiting for the couple, gorgeous couple, by the way, to book me for their very special wedding date, I had received the email! They wanted to book their wedding with me and pay the retainer to set their date in stone!!! A few professional business moves happen here to get everything set and ready for the week-ish long trip. YUP! I went to New York for 4 days! 5 days if you want to count the day I flew home.

My agenda:

Thursday – EXPLORE New York! But no one told me that my hotel wasn’t going to have parking space and that it would take me nearly 40 minutes to figure out what to do with my rental car. So I wasted about an hour or more just to get settled in.

So anyways… into the city by taxi, which cost me about $25 after a tip to get over this bridge (below). And being THE best tourist (sarcasm) that ever lived!! I FORGOT MY CAMERA!!! I am still laughing about this! So what is a girl with no camera, oh wait! Photographer! with no camera suppose to do? Travel all the way to New York to SHOP at a store that I had in my area, H&M! (insert laughing emoji here). I saw Stacey London at the H&M shopping? maybe? I am not really sure what she was doing. Looked like more talking than anything and being surrounded by cameras. That reminds me, I need to look up the recent episode and see if I am in it!

From here I just walked and walked… ate at a pizza place because my map on my phone couldn’t find anything I really wanted to eat. That was very irritating. Gave me a work out though with taking me all over the place by foot.

I eventually brewed up the courage to ask a random person in the subway, “how do you get a metro card?” Luckily they were very sweet, the couple I met, and they helped me load a new card and showed me how to understand the subway paths. I now know that Subway 7 will take me from my Hotel to Times square in one ride. This was much much cheaper than the taxi rides. I never took one again.

Friday – I flew out of New York to Washington, D.C.! Did I just confuse you? I was even lucky enough to get a booking in D.C. for an engagement session! We were trying to make it for the cherry blossoms, that’s why we booked it the same week I went to New York. We missed it, unfortunately :(. So this day I was in Washington D.C. taking some still very gorgeous photos for one of my 2016 Brides. Here are two photos from that session (blog post to follow).

Saturday Morning – I scheduled an engagement session with the New York Bride + Groom so that we could get to know each other more, other than FaceTime. I tell you what, that was such an amazing idea!! I don’t even want to talk about it… I just want to show you!!! Of course, we did get rained on. BUT if that wouldn’t have happened, we would have never gone to the fabulous coffee shop and taken photos that are probably my FAVORITE to date!!

Saturday Afternoon – I went around the city again with my camera this time and I was on a mission to capture some photos of that amazing city. I didn’t capture much, I really wanted to enjoy my time there being alone.

Saturday night – Rehearsal Dinner was scheduled in the evening.

Sunday – WAS THE BIG DAY!!! The temple was absolutely gorgeous! The reception hall/banquet room was to die for! Everything seemed to go as planned. Weddings can sometimes get behind schedule but us photographers will figure it all out and make sure everything gets taken care of.

The ceremony went perfectly. After that, they had a cocktail hour like I have never seen before! There were stations after stations of different kinds of food!! I was in food heaven! As photographers during a wedding day, we don’t ever eat much so that was torture. Before the reception began we captured a few sunset photos. I can tell you this, I am now in love with Jewish Weddings. I have never witnessed a wedding party that had so much fun partying like this one and being caught in the middle of the hora was an experience in itself! I hope you enjoy this short preview! (blog post to follow again)

 

Just extra snaps from the good ole’ iPhone… I hope to experience more weddings around the world because this was incredible! This trip made me feel so alive!