It’s only very rarely that I shoot a wedding (most of the time, I can’t, because I’m on call for births!). But Christina happened to call me right during the period of time when my “assistant” (read: my baby daughter) was old enough to be left with daddy for a few hours, but wasn’t really old enough yet to be left for indeterminate hours on end while mama attends births. And so it was that I was able to photograph the tremendously special, tender, and beautiful elopement ceremony of Christina and Leroy.
Leroy is originally from the east coast and is here in Fairbanks with the military, and Christina came here from California to join him. As Leroy said moments before their marriage, they just couldn’t bear to be apart any longer. They have a “cross country tour” planned later in the year so they can celebrate their union with family on both coasts, but in the meantime, they wanted start their lives as two.
They were married in a short and sweet ceremony at the University of Alaska Museum of the North by one of Leroy’s fellow soldiers, and were witnessed by another soldier and his wife. Both before and after the ceremony, we roamed the museum taking couples portraits. (Which was a real treat, because look at these two – ridiculously good looking, both of them.) Christina and Leroy were eager to document the day as it was, complete with the quirks and nuances of having a wedding ceremony, however small, on a weekend in a busy museum, which happened to be having – surprise – a dance and drumming demonstration in the atrium. Several times, they joked what a fabulous memory getting married in Alaska within a few hundred feet of a ginormous (taxidermied) grizzly would be. I love the love that shines through these photographs. I hope you do, too.
