Wedding in Southwest Michigan at St. John’s and Spring Lake Country Club

Let me start with saying that Lauren and Tommy are awesome! They kept me on my toes all day long, always something fun, new, strange at times, unique, and different.  For example, when I showed up to start Tommy was in the hot tub with a bunch of his friends relaxing.  He says, “I’m not going to get dressed for a while so you can get pictures of me here or just grab and drink and jump in.”  Needless to say I didn’t take him up on it.  Lauren, and her girls had equally as much spirit with their pink sunglasses and attitude, good that is.

So, I met the Wedding Party at the Khardomah Lodge in Grand Haven, Michigan were they stayed Thursday and Friday nights together.  I guess it was quite the time on Thursday night, from what the groomsmen tell me…

Wedding at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan

The Wedding was at 5pm.  We began images at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan at 3pm.  The plans were to start at 2pm with beach images but that wasn’t happening since the rains were torrential.

The flowers had not arrived so we began with images that placed more emphasis on the ladies personalities, leaving the pretty images for later.  Everyone was really easy to work with and everyone had fun ideas, and we all had fun making the images.

The guys arrived around 4ish and we starting making images with them.  Of course, Tommy had one nice shot of him in the church and then the next two images were of him flexing in two poses.  Good stuff!

The Wedding party was 10 attendants per side, two male ushers, and a flower girl and ring bearer.  Pretty large group for this Church.  It was just all the more fun.

So the rain just made me work that much harder to come up with areas where we could find great imagery.  The Church was nice but there is a lot going on in the background.  I tried moving the subjects so that there might be a stained glass window in the background or a nice door instead of a huge organ with tons of pipes coming out of their heads.  It was a wise chose.

Flowers by The Flower Gallery from Wisconsin

The flowers arrived just before the Wedding, they were coming from Wisconsin, a family friend, and they didn’t keep in mind the time change.  They smelled awesome as they moved them into position for the ceremony and got everyone pinned and ready.

The Wedding Ceremony was nice.  The Church was a bit more difficult to capture images in because they had a ton of fluorescent light and the Church was set up at a rectangle, so the side isles and main isle were long and narrow.  I still worked my magic and got the shots.

The highlight of the ceremony was once again the father and daughter walking down the isle.  This Wedding was particularly special to dad since this was his second, youngest, and last daughter.  I still get my arm hairs standing on end when I look at the Groom’s face and then capture the father and daughter walking down the isle.  I guess that I will know that if this doesn’t happen then it is time for me to find another career.  Can’t see this happening…

Lake Michigan Beach Wedding Images

After the Wedding Ceremony we did some quick family images in the Church and then found out the rain had subsided a bit and headed to the beach ~ yay!  They had a huge bus to transport all the Wedding party and significant others.  It was a party bus for sure.

The Lake Michigan beach was excellent.  The lighting was so dim, but very diffuse, from the heavy overcast  and the fact it was getting close to sunset.  We made some marvelous images on the beach in the 10 minutes we had there.  Wish we had more time on the Grand Haven lakeshore but we made the best of what we got – good ole michigan in the fall, you never know.

Spring Lake Country Club Wedding Reception

The Wedding Ceremony took place at the Spring Lake Country Club about 10 minutes from Grand Haven.  This Wedding Reception hall, the Grand Ballroom, is fabulous!  It has a larger than life dance floor and a lot of room to move around.  Large windows behind the head table, bar in the hall close to the dance floor, lots of room in the hall for cocktail hour, and the grounds are spectacular.  This Wedding was about 200 but I think we could have had another 100 in there without much problem.  The food was great, the staff was quick and efficient and the night was perfect – it was raining again, you know that is good luck right.

Oh, the grand entrance was fun.:-)  The Wedding Party really hammed it up and made some fun entrance dance moves.  The bride and groom came in to “The Humpty Dance” with their glasses and big noses on and it was a hoot.  The guests loved it ~ this was totally Lauren and Tommy.  Later in the night Tommy and friend sang “The Humpty Dance” on the bands mic.

We had all of the Wedding events except the bouquet toss, garter and the dollar dance.  You know, I don’t mind when my brides and grooms skip these because the imagery from this is rarely spectacular.  A lot of brides say they think the dollar dance is cheesy, especially to ask of more money from your guests.

The leader of the band came up to me before everything got started and I commented on size of the dance floor.  He said that that is not always good since it is so spread out.  I don’t think that he would say that now, at least for this group.  They were ALL dancing and had the dance floor slammed.  Of course, Chateau ROCKED it out with awesome live music that was masterfully done.  My hats of to the seven of you!  They came all the way from Detroit for this Friday Wedding and it was a pleasure to work with them.  Hopefully sometime soon Chateau!

Thank you for checking out my blog!  I hope you got a feeling for how much fun was had during the day with Tommy and Lauren.  You can check out the Wedding slideshow below and visit my Wedding Photography at Paul Retherford Wedding Photography