There is no short­age of places that our por­trait shoots have tak­en us on. We’ve ven­tured into cou­ples’ kitchens and their cot­tages, have ran along lakeshore and hiked through the cliffs of Tober­mory, but we nev­er imag­ined that one would take us up in the air on a plane pilot­ed by a groom.

For as long as Jen­ny and Neal have been togeth­er, Neal has owned a sin­gle engine air­plane. It’s been some­thing they’ve enjoyed through­out the years, fly­ing to the U.S., the Caribbean, or even just up to Tim­mins for pou­tine, but we were par­tic­u­lar­ly hooked when we found out Neal pro­posed to Jen­ny on one of their flights. Neal men­tioned he want­ed the wed­ding video to be epic and with a cer­e­mo­ny at St. Paul’s Basil­i­ca, a recep­tion at the Arca­di­an Court and Loft, and the fact that they were char­ter­ing a fleet of street­cars to trans­port their wed­ding par­ty and guests to all these loca­tions, we knew it’d be just that — but we also knew that there’d be noth­ing more epic than to go fly­ing with them and work that ele­ment of their sto­ry into their film.

We pro­posed the shoot and marked the date on our cal­en­dars, but as the date approached, Jen­ny and Neal had so much on their plates that we nev­er got a chance to squeeze it in before the wed­ding day. No big deal. They had so many dif­fer­ent ele­ments that this small miss­ing piece of their sto­ry could be over­looked in their final film. But then the speech­es came, and one after the oth­er, they spoke of Jen­ny and Neal’s love for fly­ing and their many adven­tures in the air, and then came Jenny’s amaz­ing speech in which she so elo­quent­ly described the begin­nings of their rela­tion­ship and how she fell in love with Neal and flying.

This is where sto­ry comes into play. Could we have put togeth­er a wed­ding film for Jen­ny and Neal that draws upon their speech­es but didn’t show them fly­ing? Yes, but we would have com­plete­ly failed them as their wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phers. Had we done that, the film would have felt like it was miss­ing this whole oth­er third char­ac­ter — one that is talked about but nev­er intro­duced. So we reached out to them the next day and luck­i­ly, with all the prepa­ra­tions for the wed­ding out of the way, we were lucky to find a date that worked once they got back from their hon­ey­moon — one that was almost two months from the wed­ding itself, but we were all will­ing to wait for the sake of the story.

It was all more than well worth it though. From the first shot, which draws you in and lets you know this isn’t your typ­i­cal wed­ding video, to the flight to the CN Tow­er Toron­to, which then so per­fect­ly tran­si­tions to the wed­ding day in the city as we estab­lish the street­car theme guid­ed by Jenny’s nar­ra­tion, there are so many things we love about this wed­ding film. But as always, we’d prob­a­bly talk too much about every sin­gle shot, when it would just be best to let you enjoy it for yourself.