It feels sur­re­al watch­ing this now, hav­ing just seen Elisa and Joel exchange their vows this past Sun­day. Although we always get to know our cou­ples exten­sive­ly, it’s one thing to know that they love mak­ing gluten-free pan­cakes on week­ends, but it’s com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to be there shar­ing in this per­son­al rit­u­al with them, and then hear­ing them talk about it in their per­son­al vows months later.

We love por­trait films because — well, aside from the fact that we have a blast shoot­ing them with our cou­ples — we get a sort of insight into their dynam­ic that we would­n’t reg­u­lar­ly cap­ture in a wed­ding film. We get to paint a true (mov­ing) por­trait of who these peo­ple are and, rather than being or feel­ing like a com­plete­ly sep­a­rate enti­ty to the wed­ding film, it actu­al­ly com­pli­ments it so well. It’d be almost impos­si­ble to work in gluten-free pan­cakes and motor­cy­cle rides on Elisa and Joel’s wed­ding day, but see­ing these ele­ments of their rela­tion­ship in their por­trait film adds a whole oth­er lay­er to their sto­ry when they’re touched upon in their vows or a speech in their wed­ding film.

Their beloved dog Onyx is a huge part of Elisa and Joel’s life, and fit­ting­ly so, was there for every part of the day, mark­ing her spot, play­ing dead, or sim­ply sit­ting by them. We’re sure that if Joel could find a way to strap her onto the motor­cy­cle, she would’ve been rid­ing along with them at the end of the day.

It was a busy day and we want­ed to cap­ture that ener­gy in every aspect of this film. We used a mix of sta­t­ic and mov­ing shots and some well-placed tran­si­tions to move the cou­ple effort­less­ly through all the dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties, and luck­i­ly, their hilar­i­ous back-and-forth com­pli­ments the fast-paced imagery. A huge bonus was that they nat­u­ral­ly talked about every­thing we see them do which helped us eas­i­ly lay out the per­fect narrative.

We guar­an­tee that you’ll have as much fun watch­ing this film as we did putting it togeth­er! Watch for some deli­cious choco­late gluten-free delights, lots of fun with Onyx, beau­ti­ful motor­cy­cle rides at dusk, and some pret­ty fun­ny things that each one is look­ing for­ward to once they’re married.