It all started with an email. Hannah and Ben had found my website and liked my style of wedding films. After a few emails back and forth we found time to talk on the phone, and about ten seconds into that call I knew these two were going to be a lot of fun to film.
In that first conversation we covered the moving we’d both done recently, our favorite Mexican food, and, eventually, their upcoming wedding. Now, I could spend the rest of this post talking about my love for Mexican food, but this is about the two of them, not my taco obsession.
“Just Friends,” For A Long Time
Their relationship started a lot like mine and my wife’s. They were “just friends” for a long stretch, and after a while people started asking whether they were going to be something more. They kept denying it, right up until they officially started dating.
As the years went by, Hannah followed a career in the medical field while Ben trained to become a police officer. By the time they got in touch with me, Ben was an officer, Hannah was finishing graduate school, and the two of them had ended up in different parts of Texas. Somewhere in the middle of all that movement and change, Ben proposed, Hannah said yes, and they decided to get married and settle down a bit.
One More Wedding At The Calvert Inn
Family friends of theirs own the Calvert Inn in, where else, Calvert, Texas. They used to host a lot of weddings there, but they’d since retired from the wedding business entirely.
For Hannah and Ben, they made an exception and opened the place up one more time.
The Inn is an old Victorian era house: big staircases, wooden floors, wide porches. That’s a genuinely great building to film in, because everything in it is doing work for you. Deep window frames give you natural vignettes, a wooden banister gives you a leading line down the middle of a shot, and a porch means you can put the camera outside looking in through a doorway and let the house frame the people for you.
It Rained All Day
Constantly.
Hannah nearly moved the ceremony indoors. Thirty minutes beforehand, all of us together decided to risk it and stay outside.
The clouds stayed right where they were, hanging over everything. But the rain held off until the ceremony was completely over, and the whole thing turned out amazing.
That gamble is one every outdoor couple eventually has to make, and I’d take those clouds every time. A solid overcast sky is the biggest, softest light source you will ever get for free. No harsh shadows across anybody’s face, nobody squinting into the sun, and skin tones that behave themselves from the first row to the back.
Inside For The Reception
An old house is the opposite problem from an open field: not enough room and not enough light. What it gives you back is character in every direction, and guests packed close enough together that the whole thing feels like a party in somebody’s home rather than an event in a rented hall. Which, given whose house it was and why they’d opened it, is exactly right.
Special thanks to Ashley Stineman for helping me film Hannah and Ben’s wedding.
Getting Married?
Interested in having me film your wedding? 🎥 Please contact me. Bring up Mexican food on the first call and we’ll get along fine.