Mark and Anthony called me up only a short few weeks before this wedding. They were doing something small and intimate and originally were not planning having a photographer. We talked a lot and about some sad stuff too.
More recently both of them experienced an incredible amount of loss. Mark losing his mother and the two of them losing friends around them. They wanted to be married for a while yet with so much sadness it was hard, until it wasn’t… as hard.
Life keeps moving forward and they wanted to move forward in love and marriage together so they threw together a wedding. Anthony had a real sense of the design elements, already had an officiant.
They had never been to Shoshone before and I walked them through some logistics in my mind. It’s actually a hard place to shoot sunset weddings, but nobody really knows that. The sun is blasting in your eyes, unless there are clouds.
Flash forward to our wedding day and now I’m not nervous about the sun but more so the clouds! The forecast was set to 90% rain in the evening. I was in flagstaff, it was dark and ominous but as drove to the canyon, I saw a lot of blue and was hopeful.
I watched as Anthony presented the boutonnieres he made for the group and then for Mark and himself. He cleverly included some lockets with photos of those who have passed on. They put them on each other in a quiet moment and then went back to getting ready for the ceremony.
Mark took Nacho aside, they sat down on the edge of the canyon and he took out a little pink ribbon from inside his chest pocket. It was a memorial to a close friend of them both. Their friend from roller derby, Sharon Fists passed on but Mark would keep them close for the ceremony, with the ribbon in his pocket.
Then everyone gathered at the point and Nacho began the ceremony. It was more than a wedding but a celebration of love and life and reflection of the hard times, hopefully in the past. As they spoke to the loss they endured, the wind picked up. It serged, actually and I know that the physical beings at the point were not the only ones witness to this wedding. It was powerful and surreal. What an amazing wedding.
Congratulations Mark and Anthony!