vanesa + will: wedding!

The day came and the day went, but it wasn’t without nerves, tears, and laughter. vanesa and will held a long long extra long distance relationship for what seemed like forever. made extra difficult not just by them being thousands of miles apart and on different time zones, but by will actually being at high sea more often than not. i remember when i first met her in french class, then helping her get a job and becoming coworkers, then came the beers after work, the heart-to-heart conversations, and the eventual wedding talk. i never told her (and i guess she is about to find out) how much i admired their dedication to each other. how strong she is. how she inspired me to love and to allow myself to be loved. and love… this day was all about it! so what else can i say? obviously everyone was gorgeous and the nerves quickly subsided and turned into a beautiful choreography of laughing and crying. they absolutely spoiled me during the whole work ay, making sure i had everything i needed and even that i got in a little dancing! i still remember how amazing it was to meet people that had travelled from so far away just to be there for them. see? i told you it was inspiring! at the end of it all i can only say that it was truly a blessing to be asked to be the one that would help them remember every face, smile, tear. forever.

vanesa + will: i love you guys! please continue to love on each other and on your friends and family the way only you know how. i am so sad to see you go, my dear vanesa, but i wish you the very best and cannot wait for our paths to cross again. you hold a special place in my heart. you once told me that to you i wasn’t just a photographer. needless to say, you weren’t just another client. i’m going to shut up now because i don’t want to cry in the middle seat on a full flight. kisses! mwah!

inma + fernando: wedding!

 

murcia, spain. unexplored territory. i flew down for a weekend to photograph inma + fernando’s wedding, and to be fair i wasn’t sure what to expect. i got it all wrong from the beginning since i thought i would never need a proper jacket in the south of spain. wrong. i also thought i could just pop into a large electronics store, or into the local h&m for whatever my last minute needs might be. wrong again. but after some minor setbacks and being able to resolve them quickly, there i was, with a borrowed jacket, discovering not only the charming little cobblestone street but most importantly the love shown to me by their people. i could go on and on about this small town that made me feel like a city girl 1,000 miles from home. i will spare you the details. all i can say is the experience was unlike any other, in the best way. 

the wedding day started out like many others, light rain, big smiles, and big expectations. as soon as the ceremony started though, it was a beautiful display of southern spanish culture. from the traditional choir, to paying a visit to the virgin after the ceremony, i felt somewhat like a foreigner in my own country, but loved seeing different traditions standing strong in modern days. afterwards we took to a small road for portraits, then the formal dinner, and then after many surprises, it was time to let it all go on the dance floor. my favorite thing was definitely counting on inma and fernando’s fabulous fun-loving attitudes. ready to celebrate, to display their love, to go nuts. enjoying every single second… and i guess it was contagious because so did i!

looking back on this very special wedding i am filled with gratitude for being given the opportunity and the amazing amount of honor and responsibility, by two complete strangers, to travel hundreds of miles to be the one who gets to tell their love story. and what a story! as for me, all i can honestly say are those infamous three little words:  i’ll be back.

mye + miguel: postboda

we got lost in the woods. mye, miguel, and little marcus… that was the love triangle, their family, their story. we met in the natural reserve of urdaibai, and it was definitely worth the drive up there. the lush fall colors and all their surroundings just made everything look magical. i had always wanted to go there for a session and i think these guys were the perfect excuse to go. marcus insisted on wearing his robin hood costume, which made for some of the most memorable wedding portraits i’ve ever done! haha. as i look through these photos i think back to the wonderful time that we had, and all i can do is congratulate them on their new life together. so congratulations, mye and miguel, you found each other.

 

 

 

iratxe +1

we planned for weeks, the day that iratxe her husband hector and i would venture out into the woods for a fun and memorable maternity session. it was a bright sunny day and we decided to hide in the shade of the gorgeous tall pine trees and make the best of the hot weather. by the end of the session we realized that there was a gorgeous sunset making way so we raced to the car and chased it all the way to the top of the mountain artxanda, that overlooks the city. it was their perfect ending to a new beginning.

yaneth & miguel::: family

their love crossed the ocean. their love beat the odds. i grew up with many babysitters, people who came and went in my life as my parents, anglican missionaries in spain, helped all kinds of different people get their lives together. people came and went, but only a few stayed. one of the few was this man, miguel. he has always been a part of my family, he’s my honorary uncle. he taught me latin and roman history when i was just a homeschooled kid. he took me to the emergency room when i was little, be it when i cracked my head open against a nightstand or when my lips turned blue from my asthma kicking in. then i became a teenager, and whatever i was going through he was still around to give a word of advice or encourage me. i remember once noticing that even though he was always hanging around with my family, he didn’t have a family of his own. i didn’t quite understand. how could such a stand-up man go unnoticed? life got busy, time went on, and surely enough he didn’t stay unnoticed for long. it was while he was working in the canary islands, far from friends and family, that he found yaneth, the woman he is now proud to call his wife. they were separated by thousands of miles, as she was at the time living in her native country of venezuela. but you know what? that didn’t stop them. like i said, their love crossed the ocean. their love beat the odds.

fast forward a couple more years, through times of living all over spain and more recently of making the big move to england, and miguel is surely not alone anymore. a proud father of two with a glowing smile for his sons samuel and xabier. they recently visited us and while catching up on everything from love, to family, to traveling the world,  the subject somehow moved to photography and we ended up booking a family session right then and there! this was definitely a special one for me and i can only hope that it was just as special for them. getting to create some of the first family portraits for this fantastic family was both fun and a tremendous privilege. the kids and i came up with all kinds of games to keep things unpredictable and we even made their parents strut their stuff for the camera. all in all, an unforgettable experience. all i can say is, i hope it’s the first of many!

jose & alex

from mexico with love. that’s what crossed my head when i met jose and alex. recently married, they relocated to spain and decided it was a great time to take some photos to commemorate their story and this new beginning together. these photos were all taken during a walk/hike we took to the gorgeous chapel in san juan de gaztelugatxe. all i can say is i hope that their new walk together through life is as beautiful as this one, but a little easier on the hike!