Believe it or not, I’ve been putting off this blog post for a few weeks now because I still don’t feel like I have really had the time to sit and wrap my head and heart around all that I learned at Justin & Mary‘s Walk Through a Wedding workshop in April. I already posted about a tiny bit of sight-seeing that I was able to do both at Yale University and at Lighthouse Point Park, but that was literally just minutes in the course of the two days in Connecticut. The bulk of the days were spent in the workshop.

I flew into Connecticut on Tuesday. After picking up my rental car and driving an hour to New Haven, I got settled into my hotel and met my roommate, Morgan. All the workshop attendees were invited to a dinner at Justin & Mary’s home that night. I wish I would’ve taken photos, but I forgot. Their living room was transformed into a beautiful styled tablescape with fresh flowers, place settings, flickering candles, and jazz music playing in the background. We mingled, laughed, and sipped cocktails before sitting down to dinner. Mary said that since we’re all in the wedding industry, we don’t get to be wedding guests; when we’re eating at a wedding, it’s fast and vulture-like (I added that, but it’s true). Tuesday night was our chance to be treated to a full course dinner, the kind that we usually don’t get to partake in. After helping with dishes and rearranging furniture to flip the living room into workshop mode, we all went home for some shut-eye before Wednesday morning arrived.

Day one of the workshop started in session, learning, discussing, and dissecting our “why”. Why do I work weekends away from my child, long hours, physically exhausting work to do this job that I love? We dove into nitty-gritty stuff like goals and “why”s to lighting and posing. We put it into practice and tried it out right there on the spot.

In the late afternoon, we traveled to Bill Miller’s Castle to really work through a wedding day. One of the things I appreciated most about this workshop was that it wasn’t easy. What I mean is that we didn’t have soft, amazing lighting to work with or perfect backdrops at our finger tips. It was real life. This is how a wedding really is. We had to think on the fly and figure it out. It’s easy to take photos in perfect light. But that doesn’t help me learn. The hands-on experience was invaluable.

We finished up the evening at the castle around 9 PM, which was great because my mental capacity had reached its limit about an hour before and I just didn’t know how much more I could take before completely shutting down. #overloadoverload

With day 1 under our belts, we all tried to get some rest before hitting it hard Thursday morning.