We’re not hap­py to say that we were part of a slight­ly evil prank lead­ing up to this wed­ding. Here’s the back­sto­ry: Crys­tal con­tact­ed us last win­ter to have us cre­ate a film for her and Jer­ry. This led to a casu­al chain of e‑mails dis­cussing her wed­ding plans and what she envi­sioned for her film. She told us she would just need to con­sult Jer and get back to us. Then he called us.

Jer­ry had us tell Crys­tal that we booked her date right after we spoke to her. No check­ing in with her at all — just booked it and were no longer avail­able. The inten­tion was noble. He want­ed to gift “us” to her for Christ­mas (weeks lat­er, mind you) and thought it’d be a bet­ter sur­prise if she thought we were com­plete­ly off the table. Our hearts broke a lit­tle bit as we wrote that e‑mail to her, and once again when she wrote back express­ing her sad­ness. But we knew it was all part of an elab­o­rate sur­prise that would undoubt­ed­ly yield a lot of hap­pi­ness. It did. She was ecsta­t­ic, we were relieved, and we could con­tin­ue on to the reg­u­lar aspects of putting togeth­er one of our stories.

We’ve actu­al­ly known Crys­tal for a long time. She was the pho­tog­ra­ph­er at one of our first wed­dings ever, and from that day, we’ve always made a point of keep­ing in touch and shar­ing lots of social media love. Along the way, we met Jer while shoot­ing a wed­ding years lat­er in cot­tage coun­try and we all hit it off over dinner.

Being part of the indus­try, and being a pho­tog­ra­ph­er specif­i­cal­ly, Crys­tal decid­ed to do things a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly. She forewent full-day pho­tog­ra­phy cov­er­age and had only the cer­e­mo­ny and a few por­traits cap­tured by When He Found Her in the after­noon. Aside from that, we’d be the only cre­atives shoot­ing the entire day. We def­i­nite­ly felt the pres­sure of being sole­ly respon­si­ble for cap­tur­ing every mem­o­rable moment, but we also felt empow­ered by a cre­ative free­dom that we’ve nev­er had before. It’s some­thing you can real­ly feel in Crys­tal and Jerry’s film.

The first dance was some­thing that Crys­tal kept going back to in our con­ver­sa­tions lead­ing up to the wed­ding. She had a vision of a first dance on the Gray­don Hall ter­race, friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers around them, sparklers in hands. It was an idea that was both inti­mate and grandiose — as well as beau­ti­ful­ly cin­e­mat­ic. As much as we love team­ing up with a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to doc­u­ment a couple’s wed­ding, Crys­tal and Jer’s first dance is that much more mag­i­cal because of Crystal’s deci­sion to have us be the only shoot­ers there. Not only because of the vari­ety of shots we were able to get or the move­ment we were able to achieve as we cir­cled around them, but because at the end of the day (lit­er­al­ly), we sim­ply blend­ed into that inti­mate cir­cle of friends and fam­i­ly, cheer­ing along to their first dance, wit­ness­ing it can­did­ly unfold, cam­eras in hand instead of sparklers. It was real­ly some­thing else.