It was a pleasure to photograph Amy and Mike’s wedding day at Downingtown Country Club. The story I was there to document was their lovely wedding, but there was also an undertone of uncertainty about the weather for most of the day as well. As a photographer, the weather is always on my mind because it can be such an important variable on a wedding day, and people would prefer to get their pictures taken and have their ceremony outdoors in the nice weather. So, for most of the day I had the weather in the back of my mind (with fingers crossed) hoping that it wouldn’t rain at that very moment, and somehow thankfully it never did rain very hard until the indoor reception part of the event.
So, the weather became the other part of the story— everyone was checking the sky throughout the day saying things like ‘it shouldn’t rain’ whilst I was nervously monitoring the situation on my phone’s doppler radar app. However, while the weather looked like it was about to rain for the entire day, the downpours held off for the most part and we were all able to get the outdoor photos that we needed before the rain really showed up. Later in the evening, we were even able to get some interesting pictures or the bride and groom with the storm clouds looming in the background. Scroll through to see my perspective on their wedding day starting with some pictures of their wedding details as their bridal parties got ready…
We had an hour set aside for pre-wedding ceremony portraits with Amy & Mike, and I had a few places in mind for portraits. There’s a nice, partly-shaded area out in front of the Country Club, near the ceremony site and some nicely gardened areas in the background, and that would be a perfect place for photos.
Mike and I went there and coordinated with the (super helpful and on-point) wedding day staff at Downingtown Country Club to bring Amy to that spot for their ‘first look’ photos, and a few bride & groom portraits.
We snapped a few more pics around the golf course there at Downingtown Country Club, and soon thereafter it was time to get ready to photograph their wedding ceremony.
During their ceremony, it actually started to drizzle very very lightly, it wasn’t too bad but the rain was slowly increasing in tempo during that time. It would have been funny to see myself focused in on the moments through my lens while also nervously trying to remove the water away as it splashed down on my new top-of-the-line camera gear. Thank goodness for pro-level ‘weather sealing’ on Canon’s professional cameras! Also, luckily for Amy and Mike, the rain kind of held back during their ceremony and no one really got too drenched. It wasn’t until the conclusion of the wedding that the rain picked up just as everyone was able to vacate.
We needed a place to do some of the family group portraits that were on the list of pictures to take after the wedding ceremony. It was raining now, but luckily we had a decent backup plan for inclement weather. In this case we could use that awning area on the front of Downingtown Country Club for the group pictures, as the rest of the guests enjoyed cocktail hour inside.
I took some pictures of the details that were setup in their reception space, and a few more bride & groom portraits there on the dance floor before their wedding guests were aloud in.
The DJ got the music going and their reception got started with entrances, dances, etc. I had a great time capturing candid moments of their guests dancing and everything that happened throughout the evening.
Towards the end of the reception, I caught up with the happy couple and we went outside to check out the storm since it had passed our area at this point. The clouds were still very menacing looking, so we got a few night time portraits that showed the area with the moody looking storm clouds overhead.
