Whenever Jenni first approached me about filming her wedding and told me where it was going to be, I pictured a small country wedding out in the trees. Some folding chairs, some pines, a nice simple afternoon.
Then I turned up on the wedding day and saw the place, and I had to rethink the entire thing on the spot.
The Lost Pines
The ceremony and the reception both happened at Angel Mountain, out in the lost pines of Bastrop, Texas, on November 6th, 2010. If you have never been out that way, the lost pines are a stand of loblolly pines sitting about a hundred miles west of where pine trees are supposed to stop, which is why they have that name, and being in the middle of them does not feel like Texas at all.
Having only known Jenni and Dustin a short time, I can still say with a perfect degree of certainty that their wedding was exactly their style. A mixture of indie and mainstream, trendy and down to earth, all at the same time. Sage green dresses, dark berries in the bouquets, a guest table with teal programs on a purple runner, string lights strung between the posts of an open pavilion. None of it matched, and all of it worked.
Watching Films Before You Shoot One
Here is a habit I want to pass along, because it costs nothing and it changes your day.
Before I film a wedding, I like to sit down and watch other people’s wedding highlight videos, just to get myself into the proper mindset. Not to copy shots. To get my head into the rhythm of the thing, so that when I am standing in the actual room I am already thinking in cuts and not in clips.
Every wedding has its own style, a theme, a flair even, and your job on the day is to work out what that is fast and then commit to it. I got that wrong before I arrived at this one. I had decided it was a rustic country wedding based on a description, and the venue immediately told me it was something more deliberate than that, and I am glad I noticed in the parking lot rather than in the edit.
Golden Hour Under The Pines
The thing that makes this film is the light, and I would love to tell you I planned it, but mostly I got handed it. A November wedding in Texas means the sun is already low by the time the ceremony ends, and Angel Mountain sits so that the light comes through the trunks sideways at exactly the right moment.
So you get sun flaring between pine trees, string lights coming up as the sky goes down, and about twenty minutes where you genuinely cannot take a bad shot. Whenever you get a window like that, stop doing whatever else you had planned and go use it. The formal group photos will still be there in half an hour. The light will not.
Who Made It
My friend Toan Tran owed me a favour after I helped him film Janie and Blayne’s wedding, and he agreed to come shoot this one with me. Thanks to his help the video turned out great, and having a second camera on a ceremony in low light under trees is not a nice-to-have, it is the difference between having the moment and not.
The venue was Angel Mountain in Bastrop. Wedding photography was expertly handled by Lisa at Illuminate Photography. The music is a song called Real Life, used with permission from the band Adelynn, who have a great sound and are all about glorifying God. Big thanks to them for letting me use it, and go listen to their music!
If you are interested in having me film your wedding, please contact me!