Ok. so here’s the deal. i normally post teasers of a wedding BEFORE i am completely finished with it. but this wedding was different… it was dear to my heart. i waited to make this blog post until i had finished the entire album of images, and picked ones that really spoke to the day, not just a quick selection of a couple of my faves.
This wedding…. this was my best friend. and she has married her soul mate. the sole person in the world that could ever make her this happy. my husband also happens to have a man crush on lynn… because he is really just that amazing.
Within the past three months i’ve felt overwhelmed with love and honor for photographing my friend’s most important moments of their lives… Amy’s wedding, and Ali’s birth of her daughter. And with both of those events it was clear that photography was a way for me to really ‘see’ and experience what was going on around me. if you are a beginning photographer and are still having to ‘think’ about what your settings are, and where the buttons are, keep at it. soon it will become second nature, your camera an extension of your hands. And once it becomes easy like this, you’ll find that you experience life through your lens like no other. this is how it is for me, and it was so great to be able to bounce back and forth from being ‘wedding photographer lex’ to ‘bridesmaid lex’. oh yeah, that’s right. i was a bridesmaid. MANY HATS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN… MANY HATS. oh, and my husband was filming super 8mm (and me too at times) and then of course there was the occassional break to pump the ta-tas because that’s right… i’m still nursing the little one!
ok, so it was a little chaotic… but so worth it.
enough about me though. i want you to hear from Amy, because this wedding was not only beautiful… it was LYNN AND AMY. so many couples get so caught up in the details, that sometimes it has nothing to do with who they actually are as a couple. and amy and lynn… they kept it 100% honest and true to who they are. best said in her own words:
Here is the history on the engagement:
When Lynn and I arrived in Coonoor India at the Ayurvedic Retreat we became good friends with a few of the workers there, specifically Mohan and Sitoram. They were the most jolly warm hearted people, and they made us feel right at home. The workers at the retreat could not understand why we were not married, “we were getting old” and we had been together for “how long?? 4 years?? 4 and a HALF YEARS!?” and so why not just get married. Most people in the Tamil Nadu region had arranged marriages and married when they were young, usually 18 years old. In the first few days we stopped being Lynn and Amy and became “boyfriend, girlfriend” hehe. Towards the end of our stay our friend went with a few workers into the small town Coonoor to buy presents for friends back home, and came back with a small present for us… a gold thread. In South India you will frequently see people with different colored thread around their wrists. Most colors represent something special, that people want to be reminded of, family, prayer, love etc. The gold thread was very special in Coonoor, it represented handing someone your whole heart and your future and becoming engaged to be married. You would tie one end of the thread around your left wrist, and then tie the other end around your love’s left wrist as a symbol of binding your love together and then you would cut the thread in the middle. It was given to us with a wink and a smile.
Soon we were packing up and leaving the small retreat, and the gold thread was placed into our pack.
We had both packed way too many things for our comfort, and so at each city along the way we shed clothes, books, bags, anything that could be donated to the local community stayed. Soon we had our two packs, and nothing else. At one point I tried to shed the gold thread. Anything and everything not is use had to go… but Lynn, with his big heart, saw the beauty and symbolism of that gold thread, and hid it away in his bag. After several months of traveling I forgot about our gold thread…
When we returned home to Madison life was busy, frantic. I found a job, we found our first little attic apartment on Winnebago street. Then on April 7, 2009 we went out to dinner for our 5 year anniversary. We had dinner in a little Himalayan restaurant, and then after dinner we stopped by the theatre; the Barrymore theatre where he had our first date and saw Damien Rice perform on April 7th 2004. Lynn thought it would be fun to go back into the theatre and reminisce a little. He knocked on the locked door, and a janitor came down to open it up. He said we could have a few minutes to walk around. We walked down the aisle and the starry ceiling twinkled around us. The lights were dimmed, and we held hands as we walked up onto the stage. I was looking around the stage when I heard the cello opening of Amie, one of our favorite Damien Rice songs. I turned towards Lynn with tears already in my eyes, realizing that this was all part of an anniversary surprise. As I turned I saw Lynn down on one knee, and the world stood still. He pulled a box out of his sock, opened the box and said “Amie, will you marry me” (or at least this is what I think he said because I could only see his mouth moving, the walls were coming in, and my hearing was long gone.) In the box was a small curled gold thread. My heart said yes, my whole body said yes. We held each other and danced around the stage to the rest of Amie. Then Lynn tied the string around his wrist, and then around mine, and cut it in the middle. The string had made it all the way back from India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, then waited patiently in a box for four months until it found its way home onto our wrists. We wore the string until it fell off, and still have it held delicately in our box of special things. After the gold thread had been loved thin, Lynn and I decided to design an engagement ring that was also meaningful and special to us. We went to the local Studio Jeweler in Madison and sat down with a local artist Whitney Robinson who made my dreams come to life on paper, then after several weeks in wax, and finally in metal and stone. To me the ring looks like water, with its aquamarine stone and curved design.
The symbol of our gold thread was so beautiful. It connected our past, our present and future. It brought our love of culture into our engagement. We decided to continue the gold thread theme in our wedding. It was wrapped around our invitation, it was tied in the welcome bags, and throughout the wedding decor. Gold was the color of the ladies jewelry, shoes and clutch.
me helping with the make-up, photo courtesy of Lindsay McCarthy, my second shooter!
raining beautifully on her wedding day
the first meet... both walking from opposite ends of the capital square to meet in the middle.
- groom’s details- the cufflinks were actually miniature maps (infinitesimle!) of madison WI
pocket watch engraved with the letter A, passed down in Amy's family for generations tied with the gold thread carried throughout the wedding.
and then opens again to reveal the gears... stunning
the beautiful aquamarine ring
the groomsmen's bowties, all handmade on etsy.com
so fun to set this up, and then hop in the picture!
shoes. lets get some shoes.
lynn had each bowtie hand made individually for his groomsmen. possibly my favorite detail of the wedding 
cards handed out at the ceremony to each guest
mother of the groom- honorary members and guests carried delicate fans brought back from Malaysia by the groom’s sister Celeste- such a beautiful detail.
the ficus tree, water, and soil
more beautiful Malaysian fans
at last!
my loves!
string quartet at the ceremony, and later at the reception
the ladies... obviously a quick snapshot needs to be thrown in.
vintage suitcase i found along side the road and brought with me just for my amy
the memorial union for the reception
in-between moments are the most beautiful
It was important to us that our wedding was truly a representation of who we were and what we valued. We wanted guests to look around and say “this is really Lynn and Amy”. That started with staying true to our value of being environmentally conscious, and using local vendors and small businesses. Lynn is starting law school in environmental international law, and we wanted to make sure we did not harm the environment while trying to celebrate our love. It started with the invitations, which we worked with Paper Deli to create. Brian at Paper Deli was so helpful. He helped us choose all post consumer recycled papers, some of the paper was also crafted from recycled fabric. He printed and constructed them locally in Madison with the help of his brilliant family. We picked out a gold thread that most closely resembled our engagement thread and they were on their way! We kept our wedding planning exclusively online, and used google documents with shared authors to keep family and friends in the loop. All of my wedding magazine were recycled from friends, and then passed on to my sister in law Kelly. We reduced the paper we used immensely by working with our google docs. We chose our ceremony and reception sites within a 2 mile radius and provided guests with transportation to cut back on individual motor vehicle use around the city. We had the ceremony in a beautiful garden (Olbrich Botanical Gardens) which meant we could completely avoid flowers for the ceremony as well as an air conditioned event space. The reception took place in our favorite place on campus the Memorial Union which is completely staffed by students. Lynn and I spent the first year of our relationship intimately connected to the Union; we studied there, we watched the stars from the piers, we sat on the Terrace with friends, we went to plays and movies together it was our living room on campus. It was only fitting to invited our friends and family to share our love of such a special place. Our rehearsal dinner was held at the magnificent Marigold Kitchen, a restaurant that prides itself on using local produce. MK is one of our favorite breakfast and lunch spots in Madison, and it was walking distance for guests located on the capitol square! The floral arrangements were crafted by Daffodil Parker a brilliant team of local artists that worked with our vision and helped us create more eco-friendly arrangements including submerged fruit and floating candles that could be taken home and eaten after the party, (insert from me: i believe i did eat an entire orange late in the reception….) and flowers that were in season and did not need to be shipped in from different countries. The groomsmen wore natural linen pants and vest. Our cake was made by Sweet Street Bakery, a local baker Julie and her husband. We had beer from local micro breweries at the reception including Furthermore and Ale Asylum. The morning after the wedding instead of hosting a brunch we invited our friends and family to enjoy the local farmers market around the capitol square and share in our love of the local produce and crafts.
Our color palette was inspired by the bright jewel tones we saw in India
And there are so many things that amy didn’t even mention here, like the cuff links found on etsy, the handmade bowties for the groomsmen, the beautiful tree ceremony that they performed during the wedding: Amy poured in water and Lynn poured in soil to symbolically represent the growth and nourishment of their love. the pocket watch with the letter A inscribed on it passed down from generation to generation to children bearing the first letter A in their name, bicycles because lynn and amy rarely drive their car, but bike to work instead.
it was truly incredible. so incredible that i am finding myself up at 12:33 in the morning STILL finding images i want to publish in this post. i think in order to not overwhelm you, i’m going to make their wedding into a series of three posts, somewhat jumping around. following this will be a reception post, and following that a “behind the scenes” look into the whole getting ready process! stay tuned for more amy and lynn amazingness….
ps… patience with me this week! i’m traveling to some destination weddings so i’ll be out of the office. actually, i have been out of the office for the past 5 days already! YIKES! cant wait to get home soon and catch up on email etc.
Credit:
Hairpiece- Twiggs and Honey
Dress- Gigi’s Bridal Mequon
Jewelry- (bracelet) Etsy Vendor- Gift from bride’s mother, not sure which shop! so sorry! (earrings) anthropologie
Grooms Suit- Calvin Klein
Groomsmen Pants/Vest- Calvin Klein Linen
Cufflinks- Etsy- The Map
DJ- Juke Box Bandstand
Letterpress- Brian of Paper Deli
Rings- Amy- “Beloved” Whitney Robinson
Lynn- James Binion – Mokume Gane- “wood eye” in Japanese
Hairdresser- Carisa from Ultimate Spa and Salon
Bowties- Etsy- The Belle and the Beau- could no longer find this seller!
