What a weekend. I really don’t know where to start, other than to say that Jess and I have the best friends and family. I expected it to be awesome, but really, there’s not a thing I’d change about our wedding this past weekend, we both had a ridiculously good time. I’m sure there will be many, many more photos to come, but I wanted to kick this post off with the above portrait shot by our wedding photographer, my good friend Ned Jackson. Ned kicked some serious ass this weekend and I can’t wait to see the rest of the images. Also deserving a thank you is my friend Eric McCallister who was Ned’s second shooter for the day. Despite our attempts to get them to stop working and party with us, these two worked their butts off and we can’t wait to see the final results.
With that said, I want to get right to the point of this blog post - announcing the winner of my “I shoot your wedding. You pay $0. A storytelling contest.” I gave the winner a quick heads up Saturday morning, but I’m wicked exited to share their story here.
Erin and Alex were actually the first entry I received, and after I shared their story with Jess, and then my parents and sister over breakfast on Saturday, they were a unanimous winner. Erin wrote:
“Alex and I are your run-of-the-mill couple. A Massachusetts native, I love making soup, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick. Alex, a Californian until he was 26, can’t get enough of cheese-making, news magazines and robots. We fell in love at grad school over late night snack sessions at the vending machines. After a year of dating, we took a May trip to California to meet his family, friends, and favorite watering holes. Our first excursion was a quick hike along a mountain creek at the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. We shuffled along the side of a ravine for a while and eventually Alex descended towards the picturesque creek below us. As we closed in, the creek transformed from a Water Country lazy river into a class five rapids. It was still beautiful, but I was getting a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to use my bathing suit, especially since snowmelt from the snow covered Sierra Nevada range was the culprit for the hydrological deathtrap.
Alex told me to take off my shoes because we had to cross this icy river to get to the other side where he wanted to show me a waterfall – did I mention I love waterfalls? We stepped out onto the first rock jutting out of the creek then paused to brace for the numbing water that was about to numb our bare feet. The next six feet of crossing would require shimmying along a fully submerged rock that had a six-inch ledge we could use to brace our legs against. There was nothing to hold on to during this part… Alex went first, after giving me strict instructions, “Don’t fall in.” Right when he landed on the opposite bank, I fell in.
I screamed, “ALEX” as I went over the first waterfall and struggled to get to the side. Before the next drop, I smashed into a rock, clung there like I’d figured out how to get out of this river, but the river was just teasing and instead picked me back up and threw me further down stream, smashing in to more boulders along the way. Still screaming, “ALEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I struggled further towards the side but there was nothing to grab a hold of and I went down yet another rocky rapid. At this point, I’d screamed “ALEX!!!!!!!” a baker’s dozen times and each scream was met with a response of “HOLD ON!!!!! GET TO THE SIDE!!!!!!!” He had somehow scaled the sheer cliff rocks on his bank to keep up with me as the river carried me along, shouting instructions the whole time, watching me get tossed around by the water and rocks and trying to decide what to do.
“The Big One” was the next plunge on my wet tour of Rock Creek (as I later learned it was called). I only had two thoughts going through my mind: I hate pain and Alex will fix this. I somehow found and jammed my toes into an underwater crevasse. I was now precariously anchored about four feet from the river’s edge and two feet from a fifteen-foot drop and Alex was hurrying after me. I went under. Whirling water tossed me around like it was flushing me down the toilet, but I hung on with my vice toe grip. I finally emerged again and Alex was waiting for me, sprawled out across a steep cliff, with a long, dead log. I grabbed on, full trusting him and the strength of his stick to pull me to safety. It worked.
We sat there, exhausted, wet and crying and checking for broken bones. I was very bruised, but not broken and, more importantly, alive. Alex cocooned me in a towel. Then he looked at me and said, “Do you want to get married?”
We don’t have many photographs from that day, and the ones we did take still give Rock Creek that peaceful, inviting look. We’re hoping that when we get married on September 25th at Smith Barn in Peabody, MA, we’ll have a photographer there to truly capture the moments that are part of our lifetime together, safe and sound. And then we can tell you the story of how we got back to our car from the wrong side of the river with only one pair of shoes between the two of us!”
Erin and Alex will be married in September at Peabody’s Smith Barn and I can’t wait to share their day with them (and hear the rest of their story!)
[...] readers will remember Erin and Alex from this past spring as the winners of my “I shoot your wedding. You pay $0″ contest. Well their wedding was a couple of weeks back at Smith Barn in Peabody, and it was such a [...]