Rebecca and Sean: A Granite Rose Wedding
Rebecca and Sean’s wedding at the Granite Rose in New Hampshire was full love and golden New England foliage. Check out some of my favorite photos from my last wedding of the 2020 season.
Rebecca and Sean were my last wedding of the extremely eventful 2020 wedding season. Their wedding was at the beautiful Granite Rose in Hampstead, NH and was the perfect note to end the year on.
I am always advocating that people hire wedding photographers that they can get along with. A long time ago, I would seek out any client that would hire me regardless of personality. Everyone goes through that phase in anything that they do- hungry for experience and unwilling to turn anything down out of fear that you won’t get another opportunity. As I got more experienced and became comfortable in my own shoes as a photographer, I realized that it’s just better for everybody if you work with clients that you would like even outside of the wedding environment. As a result, most of my business comes from referrals from past awesome clients or from people who see my extremely specific ads on Facebook. Rebecca and Sean were pointed in my direction by their friends Kayla and Daniel and I am so happy that they were because they are exactly the sort of people that I like working with.
The first time that I met Rebecca and Sean was during their engagement session in New Hampshire. There are ALWAYS nerves when you meet people for the first time- particularly when that entails telling them to kiss on command in front of a camera - but it became clear real early on that we all had a similar laidback vibe. We were all go-with-the-flow people and I think that kind of attitude really helped us come up with some great photos as we wandered around space we were shooting at and the lake across the street.
They took this same vibe to their wedding at the Granite Rose. There were the usual masks, space, and precautions but for the most part it was easy to forget about the outside world for a while. I spent the first part of the day bouncing between Rebecca’s prep with her friends and family and Sean’s prep with his groomsmen. Everybody was energetic and ready to go. Their ceremony was lovely and I truly had a blast spending some time with Rebecca and Sean taking photos all over the Granite Rose property. Just like their engagement session, we basically hit gold in terms of New England fall foliage. After an awesome session I headed home happy to have finished the wedding season on a really high note.
Weddings are team efforts. Check out some of the vendors that made this wedding rock! Click their names to visit their sites.
Venue: The Granite Rose by Wedgewood Weddings located in Hampstead, NH. Packages include food, ceremonies and receptions.
Dress Alterations: J Mason Design located in Windham, NH.
DJ: Justin from Main Event Entertainment in Londonderry, NH. Justin killed it and was a blast to work with from a photographer’s standpoint.
If you’re a laid-back couple looking for a laid-back wedding photographer I would love to chat! Fill out the form below and I will send you some info!
Brittany and Ben: The Old Stone Church
Fall weddings in New England are beautiful. You don’t really need more than a nice place with awesome people. Check out some photos from this wedding at the Old Stone Church in West Boylston, MA.
Brittany’s sister reached out to me a couple weeks before Brittany and Ben’s wedding to see if I would be available. Like a lot of people, Brittany and Ben’s plans had changed and they decided to get married at a small ceremony outdoors followed by a nice dinner celebration afterwards surrounded by the people they love.
Their wedding took place at the Old Stone Church in West Boylston in the middle of the fall. The colors were beautiful. I have shot here a million times but this was actually my first wedding here. We had a nice layer of clouds to kill any harsh light coming directly onto us.
Brittany and Ben, along with their families, were awesome. I enjoyed talking to everyone before Brittany arrived and this continued through their ceremony and onto their dinner at O’Connor’s Restaurant in Worcester- a place that I always love.
Everything was relaxed and simple and I think it’s really obvious that weddings in New England don’t have to be complicated to be beautiful.
If you are planning an intimate wedding celebration at the Old Stone Church, O’Connor’s, or any other place then I would love to hear from you!
Holly and Joshua: A Country Wedding
One of the great things about getting married in New England is the sheer diversity when it comes to venues and vibes. Holly and Joshua got married on a working farm in MA and the wedding was distinctively them… and awesome! Check out some photos from their wedding at historic Elm Hill Farm in Brookfield, MA.
Holly and Joshua might be two of the most easy-going and cooperative couples that I have worked with. They were always game to do something a little bit different and most of the time it was their idea to do so. On the day of their engagement session, there was this really intense fog and I was worried that it might be a little less rustic-country and a bit more horror movie than they wanted but they were game. I think by embracing the weather we were able to capture some awesome colors and set a vibe that really fit them well.
So, they’re adaptable. That was key because their wedding fell right, smackdab in the middle of the pandemic. They had to improvise quite a bit but in the end their wedding day was a huge success. It also seemed to be very much THEM.
The prep / ceremony took place at Elm Hill Farm in Brookfield, MA. This is a place that means something to them and that they spend a lot of time at. It is rustic and photogenic but also a working farm. One of the highlights of my walkthrough a couple days before the wedding was talking to the owner when somebody brought up the farm’s Facebook page.
“We have a Facebook page?!”
I love rustic stuff and historical places. I shoot at a lot of barns-turned-venues but you really can’t beat the real thing. Holly and Joshua got ready in an old farmhouse on the property that didn’t really look like it had been changed much over the last 100 or so years. It was really awesome to have this place as a backdrop. I also didn’t see any ghosts, which is always a plus.
Their wedding ceremony took place in front of a huge barn and we got to wander around taking photos afterwards. Their reception took place at their house underneath tents with a ton of food and space to dance with a roaring fire to keep everybody warm and happy after dinner.
Check out some of my favorites!
If you’re a horse person, check out Elm Hill Farm on Facebook by clicking here.
Getting married somewhere unique? I’d LOVE to hear from you!
Small Weddings and Why They Rock
Weddings have been trending towards smaller, more intimate celebrations for a while. The pandemic has made this necessary. If you’re on the fence about a small wedding then check out some of the benefits from a New England wedding photographer’s point of view.
Planning a wedding can be stressful. This is particularly true here in New England where most people get married during the summer and fall. Add in the need to adhere to pandemic regulations and the phrase “stressful AF,” might be an understatement. This is one of the reasons why the popularity of smaller weddings like elopements, backyard weddings, intimate weddings, and micro-weddings have become immensely popular. If you are reading this, then there’s a good chance that you are thinking about celebrating your love with a smaller wedding. Now, this might be something that you have always known you wanted but it could also be something that the pandemic has forced on you. Either way, there are some huge benefits to having a smaller wedding celebration - pandemic or no pandemic.
Less planning means significantly less stress
Weddings are heavy in logistics that take a lot of time to figure out. You could definitely (and probably should) hire a wedding planner to help you out but regardless, there is a lot to plan. And you know what? There is still a lot to plan with a small wedding - it just won’t have quite as many moving parts that have to be balanced against other moving parts. It is a lot easier to have the people who mean the most to you in your backyard under the stars, in a park pavilion, or at your favorite restaurant after a city hall wedding ceremony than it is to try to factor in the driving time between a ceremony location and the reception. Planning on a smaller scale helps keep that overwhelming wave that comes with big weddings at bay. It makes everything from space concerns to seating charts a little more doable which makes the whole wedding process a lot more fun for you.
Less of a financial gut punch
Weddings are not cheap. Like, at all. If you think of them from a logical financial point of view they are actually terrible investments- and this is coming from somebody in the industry. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense to spend such a large amount of money on something that is over in a few hours- especially for a young couple just starting out in life. Of course we don’t look at weddings from the eyes of an investor, we look at them through the eyes of the in-love, their families and friends. They are the splurges of our lives and we all deserve to splurge sometimes. Smaller weddings are also a splurge but they will give you less of a spending hangover (possibly more of a real hangover-depending on your friends and the bonfire situation). Take a backyard wedding. With sites like Pinterest and DIY being huge now, it is absolutely possible to pull off a dream wedding with a little bit of space and a lot of motivation. Some of the coolest weddings I have been to involve a brick oven pizza food truck, string lights, and a big tent full of friends in the back of somebody’s house.
You will be more present
This one is huge. In fact, if money isn’t an issue and even if you love the idea of planning a huge event, this might still be enough to bring you around to the idea of a smaller wedding. I shoot weddings all over New England. Each season I have weddings of all sizes- from small elopements at Worcester City Hall to huge events at the resorts in Vermont. I love them all but there is a huge difference between them that is super apparent in the time between the wedding ceremony and the reception. After the ceremony is typically the time where the couple stands in one spot for a while and family and friends gather around them for formal group portraits. These are important but in all of my years I have never heard anybody say “Wow, Tom. This is just great. Definitely the highlight of the day.” It’s something that is necessary but rarely anybody’s favorite part of a wedding. This almost always takes place at the same time as cocktail hour and is usually followed by formal couple portraits. This usually culminates with missing the entirety of cocktail hour and then arriving just in time to be announced into the room and into first dances, parent dances, toasts and everything else. Before and after dinner is when most couples make their rounds to all of the tables to say hellos and thank their guests for coming - possible with a photo at each table. I’ve seen people pass out before they even got to dinner.
This isn’t really a thing at intimate weddings because you all are really just together for most of - if not all of - the time. There are formal group photos but there are fewer of them and they tend to be more casual because you are more comfortable with them and there are fewer people looking at you. There are still couple photos but there is usually less of a rush because the timeline is more relaxed. Table photos - which are my least favorite part of a wedding- are usually not necessary because you will be up close with everyone while you dance, party and celebrate. You will be able to spend real, authentic time with the people present. I mean, isn’t that ideal?
This brings me to photography
Photographers come in a lot of flavors. Some have their personalities cranked to 11 and say things like “I’ll be busting moves with you on the dancefloor by the end of the night,” while others (like me) are a cool 7 and barely busted a move at their own wedding. At our core, though, we are all just storytellers. Photographing weddings brings me satisfaction because each one is a story I get to see and bring out into one very long photo-essay. The thing about smaller weddings is that the stories are closer to the surface. There is less formality to cut through and more genuine interaction. Being with a tighter knit group of people brings the belly laughs and tears of joy out a lot easier. Having a smaller cast allows me to capture a much more authentic experience and for couples who gravitate towards documentary photography styles that is really important.
If you are planning on eloping or having a backyard wedding, intimate wedding, micro-wedding in New England and are looking for candid-heavy documentary wedding photography then I would love to hear from you. I am based in Worcester, MA but provide wedding photography all over New England. Click here to see photography from smaller / DIY weddings. If you want to receive more info, including pricing, then fill out the form below and I will send you my FREE PDF GUIDE to intimate wedding celebrations.
Brianna and Zach: A wedding at the Allrose Farm
Life might have gotten all wonky over the past several months but love carries on. Relive the warmth of summer with some fun photos from Brianna and Zach’s rustic wedding at the Allrose Farm in Greenfield, NH.
It’s mid-November. The busy season is over and it’s time to reflect on what happened this past wedding season. The 2020 wedding season was, frankly, a s*#^ show. If nothing else, it is comforting to know that 2020 was pretty much the same for everyone. There’s comfort in numbers, right?
It did have it’s moments, though. For every wedding of mine that got canceled there was another wedding that adapted and overcame. Having to pare down guest lists and build events around health guidelines was a challenge for everyone in the industry, particularly brides and grooms. Brianna and Zach, chose to embrace the changes that had to happen and carry on. They were one of this year’s highlights.
I met Brianna and Zach through one of my first couples, Jane and Aline. It’s always a lot less stressful when you know a couple hires you based on liking your style and actually seeing you work previously. Their engagement session was at Hampton Beach.
Their wedding was at the Allrose Farm in Greenfield, NH. The Allrose is one of those rustic, quintessentially New England venues that I love photographing at. The grounds were expansive enough to give us a ton of options but also small enough to move from spot to spot without taking up too much time.
One of the things that I loved about this wedding was that everyone was really, really laid back. It was really fun watching everyone dance but I was pumped to hear the occasional pop-punk anthem add a little spice to the playlist- as somebody who stuck a little Piebald into my wedding playlist I can appreciate that. They also had one of those weddings where people were really free to do what they wanted. Guests meandered around the barn where most of the action was but also spent time getting some fresh air and watching the sunset or just taking in a New England evening.
This was definitely one of the bright spots in a really weird year.
Great weddings, and I would DEFINITELY rank this as a great wedding are team efforts. Click the links below to learn more about the vendors who helped make this wedding great.
Venue: Allrose Farm in Greenfield, NH
Event Coordinator: Angela Marie Weddings in Deerfield, NH
Catering and Bartending: B&M Catering in Pawtucket, RI
Make-up Artist: Katie Walsh at KW Salon in Portsmouth, NH
Hair: Kelsey Kozak at Kels10hair in Plainville, MA
Dress: Stella Grace Bridal in Salem, NH
Alterations: Pins and Needles in Danvers, MA
Tom’s Blog:
Pictures are worth a thousand words but check out what goes on behind the scenes during my sessions.