You can always count on the bride being a lit­tle late to the cer­e­mo­ny, and Tea was no excep­tion. Now that gave us plen­ty of time to set up, but we’re pret­ty sure Matt was sweat­ing it out dur­ing that wait. A lit­tle bit after an hour how­ev­er, Tea walked down a beau­ti­ful aisle lead­ing up to a majes­tic weep­ing wil­low, and the cer­e­mo­ny flowed as if noth­ing had hap­pened — aside from a hand­ful of jokes about time­li­ness, of course.

One of our very first ques­tions when we meet with any cou­ple is, “are you writ­ing your own per­son­al vows?”

If yes, that’s usu­al­ly fol­lowed by, “will they fol­low a spe­cif­ic for­mat or will they be a speech?” We were delight­ed when Tea and Matt said they’d be more like the lat­ter. We love per­son­al vows, for many rea­sons, but espe­cial­ly because they cre­ate an open dia­logue between a cou­ple dur­ing the most impor­tant part of the day. They’re full of char­ac­ter and inti­ma­cy, and they lend us a pow­er­ful nar­ra­tive that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Tea and Matt’s vows were sim­ply per­fect and the serene lit­tle spot where they exchanged them in on Nia­gara on the Lake was a dream to shoot in.

But aside from these incred­i­ble vows, there was one thing we were dying to work into their film. Matt told us that one of the things that Tea had intro­duced him to was man­gos. He had nev­er tried one in his entire life before meet­ing Tea, but soon after get­ting his first taste of man­go, he start­ed hav­ing one every sin­gle day. We knew we had to work this in some­how, so we asked them to greet each oth­er with a cou­ple of man­gos and then go to town on them. They did, and as Tea says in their film, it was exact­ly what she need­ed at that point in the day.

Enjoy!