Weddings

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.

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It was at the busiest point of our 2015 sea­son that we took a 7‑hour road trip up to Tim­mins, Ontario to be a part of an edi­to­r­i­al shoot for Wed­Luxe Mag­a­zine. Lau­ra from Lau­ra & Co. had reached out to us and filled us in on the project — there was talk of fox­es, fal­cons, and the great north­ern wilderness.

We were con­vinced before we had even fin­ished read­ing the e‑mail and were ready to move heav­en and earth to be a part of this project.

So hav­ing just shot Andrea and Jef­f’s wed­ding on the Sat­ur­day, we charged our bat­ter­ies, backed up our cards, and packed to dri­ve up on Mon­day, shoot for the next two days, and come back for Thurs­day to get every­thing ready for Crys­tal and Jer’s on Friday.

We left around noon on Mon­day, tak­ing a small detour to Neo Cof­fee Bar for some good cof­fee and snacks. We had heard a lot about this place but hon­est­ly, it was love at first sip and is now one of our favourite cof­fee spots in Toronto.

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Andrea and Jeff’s day took us on a tour of some of Toronto’s best wed­ding venues; from the Ritz-Carlton, to Knox Col­lege, and then to the Dis­tillery Dis­trict for an inti­mate din­ner at the Fer­ment­ing Cel­lar. But despite all of the beau­ti­ful imagery we were able to cre­ate at these loca­tions, a good set­ting means noth­ing with­out some great char­ac­ters — and Andrea and Jeff, are some pret­ty amaz­ing characters.

It wasn’t so much about “how do we shape and pace this sto­ry”, but which of all of the dif­fer­ent sto­ries to focus on.

Between their cards, per­son­al vows, and equal­ly per­son­al speech­es, we had a lot to work with. It wasn’t so much about “how do we shape and pace this sto­ry”, but which of all of the dif­fer­ent sto­ries to focus on. At the fore­front of this nar­ra­tive, is the cel­e­bra­tion of Andrea and Jeff’s love — one sim­ply shaped by laugh­ter and good sleep (usu­al­ly on Jeff’s armpit) — and the esca­lat­ing excite­ment to see each oth­er at the altar. We want to empha­size that inten­si­fy­ing excite­ment. Andrea actu­al­ly lost all feel­ing while putting on her dress and it didn’t return until after her and Jeff’s first look.

As Jeff hilar­i­ous­ly put it, he doesn’t under­stand why peo­ple get cold feet, his feet were on fire. And that rings so true for these two. Nine years in the mak­ing, they just couldn’t wait to say their I do’s.

This film has been in-the-making for a few months now and it’s one that is dear to our hearts. We’ve been in love with this sto­ry from the first time we hit record on our cam­eras back in August to just over a week ago when Kali and Edward tied the knot at the Art Gallery of Ontario and we put the final pieces of this puz­zle togeth­er into a same-day edit for them. This is a film that we’re over-the-top excit­ed to share and one that per­fect­ly rep­re­sents our phi­los­o­phy when it comes to wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phy, so it would only make sense for us to back­track a bit and share a lit­tle bit about our process lead­ing up to the final piece.

We first met Kali in July over an iced cof­fee in Leslieville. It was­n’t long before we learned that both her and Edward live by some pret­ty busy sched­ules span­ning a cou­ple of con­ti­nents and a hand­ful of coun­tries and, because of that, Edward could­n’t make that first meet­ing. But it was­n’t lack of inter­est. Actu­al­ly, Kali told us that Edward was par­tic­u­lar­ly enthu­si­as­tic about videog­ra­phy — maybe a lit­tle more than she was — and that she con­nect­ed with our work main­ly because it was­n’t cheesy, or con­trived, or even very “wedding‑y” (we’re mak­ing that a word). The more we talked, the more we real­ized we were a per­fect fit. She real­ly just want­ed their sto­ry told and, from what we gath­ered, we would have some beau­ti­ful venues and set­tings to work in. Our only task was to make a film that would­n’t make Kali roll her eyes, but that would be easy enough.

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Most wed­dings these days have an insta­gram hash­tag, but Jessie and Stephen’s had a bit more sig­nif­i­cance than oth­ers. #drayter­berg rep­re­sent­ed a lot more than a sim­ple way for the cou­ple to find and go through a col­lec­tion of insta­gram pho­tos. A blend­ing of both their last names, #drayter­berg rep­re­sent­ed the com­ing togeth­er of not only two incred­i­ble peo­ple, but two adorable families.

Jessie and Stephen are from San Diego, so their cel­e­bra­tion in Nia­gara on the Lake was a des­ti­na­tion wed­ding with their clos­est friends and rel­a­tives. They had us out for the entire week­end, allow­ing us to immerse our­selves in all their wed­ding fes­tiv­i­ties, includ­ing a very emo­tion­al rehearsal din­ner the night before the big day. con­tin­ue read­ing »

We’d like to think that if you met Melis­sa and Steve on any oth­er day in which they weren’t get­ting mar­ried, you would see exact­ly what you see in this film. That’s because their day was sim­ply ooz­ing with per­son­al­i­ty and every­thing just came togeth­er in a way that  allowed us to cre­ate a per­fect por­trait of who these two real­ly are.

We’ll start from the top. We first met Melis­sa and Steve this past win­ter. They’re wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phers them­selves and so we imme­di­ate­ly hit it off over cof­fee; talk­ing about our jobs, our indus­try, and our favourite films of the past year. We dis­cussed their day, and with every detail, we became more and more excit­ed about every­thing they had planned.

Now over the next few months, we could­n’t stop run­ning into them every time we were in Toron­to. We’d see them at Tiff Bell Light­box on our way to catch a movie, we’d see Steve on Queen St. West, then Melis­sa in Zara a cou­ple of hours lat­er. See­ing them walk about the city, we real­ized what an inte­gral part of them Toron­to has become, and all the walk­ing around and quick loca­tion changes on the wed­ding day took on a much deep­er mean­ing with­in their film. Along­side the cou­ple, Toron­to is a huge char­ac­ter in this sto­ry and one that is loom­ing over every mile­stone of their day.

One evening, a few weeks before the wed­ding, we met for drinks at the Thomp­son Hotel just before head­ing up to see the rooftop in which they were plan­ning to share their first look, and we heard for the first time about their love for cof­fee. Now we love our cof­fee, and we have friends who are cof­fee fanat­ics, but no one real­ly loves cof­fee as much as Melis­sa and Steve. They went on and on about the dif­fer­ent types of cof­fee they reg­u­lar­ly drink and the dif­fer­ent ways they make it. Steve men­tioned that him and his grooms­men would be head­ing to Ear­ly Bird in the morn­ing to have siphon cof­fee and explained what exact­ly that was. We were so hap­py that their love for cof­fee was nat­u­ral­ly worked into their day and decid­ed we’d def­i­nite­ly have to tag along for that adven­ture. con­tin­ue read­ing »

This film is the rea­son we shoot weddings.

We shoot to cap­ture peo­ple, places, and moments — bring­ing them to life in a way no one could have imag­ined. We tell sto­ries. We cap­ture mem­o­ries. And we com­bine these ele­ments to cre­ate a wed­ding film that allows our cou­ples to relive these mag­i­cal moments. When a stranger is able to watch our films and be com­plete­ly engaged with the sto­ry we’re telling and make a per­son­al con­nec­tion to the cou­ple in the heart of it all, we know we’ve done our job. It’s beau­ti­ful­ly empow­er­ing. con­tin­ue read­ing »