joe & sarah’s wedding photos // lake sammamish, washington

I feel like I’ve told this story a million times before, living here in Washington… a gorgeous setting to what’s anticipated to be the best day of their lives, and then a full week’s prior being inundated with weather forecasts showing rain rain rain. So everyone scrambles for plan b (tents! that’s always the plan b around here!), reassures each other that everything will be gorgeous and that rain is, in fact, a wonderful sign from the gods for a blessed marriage (honestly I think that all Washingtonians have uttered these words more than once in their lives!)… and then wouldn’t you know it, all that stress and the only time the clouds break open is to pour rays of light down on us as we celebrate love.

Oh, Washington! If anything, you have made us a breed of over-preparers with a gift for folklore; a people who can really appreciate it all!

This was the classic setting to Joe & Sarah’s wedding, as I’m sure you guessed… but in the end, what we had to look back on was a day with classic Washington grey warmth, a body of water as the opening backdrop to a love story surrounded by family and friends who love a good old Pacific Northwest tale of impending rain and inevitable sunshine.

And just to give a little backstory to this setting, Joe and Sarah rented an apartment in this little neighborhood right on Lake Sammamish, but at the time of their wedding they were also in talks with their next door neighbors to buy their house (which they eventually did, a few months later), so the logistical setting of their event looked like this: Joe got ready at their apartment, Sarah got ready at their soon to be new home next door where we also did most of their photos, and on the other side next door is the lawn on which they had their wedding ceremony, and next to that was where we also did family photos and was the dock where they launched off for a private moment together once they said “I do!” Got all that?!!! Even I don’t have it all down… but this is just to say that, Joe & Sarah just so happened to live in a wonderful little tiny community of neighbors and friends who surrounded them with the open arms of their homes and helped them celebrate the beginning of their forever lives together right on the edges of that lake. Amazing.

Joe & Sarah now have a little baby boy, and I imagine that they often hold him and look out at the lake, and whisper to him, “This is where it all began. This is where we promise to love.”