Here's what we're all about:

1. Journalistic candids that discreetly capture the story of your wedding day.
These are moments caught within moments, and when strung together they form a scaffold for your imagination to fill. Candids are what make hiring us worthwhile; we believe strongly that these are the images that will best preserve the emotional resonance of your wedding day. Not just what happened, but who you and yours were at that time, in that moment. 

2. Portraits that tap the heart of your relationship
Seven years from now- maybe after a big fight - you can look at those photographs and remember that yes indeed, at one point in time you were totally hot for each other, so maybe you should go make up :-)

3. Crisp, high contrast black and whites
Strip out color to nail the true meaning of the moment, and smooth, natural color images that reveal the warmth and beauty of people and things within.

4. Capturing the natural humor that arises during your wedding day all on its own. 
If you know what to look for, there's no need to force anything.

5. Kids
We love kids (we have three of our own, 11, 8 and 11 months) and have lots of experience getting them to reach maximum adorability before snapping the shutter button.

6. Discretion
In other words, not immortalizing anything that would be embarrassing to you and/or your guests.

7. Being us
A funny, sometimes fiesty but always loving married couple who are terrific all-day companions for your wedding adventure.

Here's what we're not into:

1. The 'flash-lit' look. Have you ever seen an image where the bride and groom look like they've been photoshopped onto a background? Yeeeeaaah. . . . we don't do that. We've invested in top-of-the-line professional equipment that allows us to usually capture images using only the light that's naturally available, lending a very true-to-life, unobtrusive feel to our images. People in conventionally flash-lit photos usually look like someone's pointing a flashlight in their face, which is almost never flattering. There are times when using a flash is unavoidable and we'll bring plenty of ways to create and shape light with us on your wedding day, but we'll never point a camera-mounted flash directly at you. Boo. 

2. Selective color. You know, where you have a black and white image that has one color visible in a selected area - red roses or something. If your reaction to the last sentence was 'OMG I love that!' than we're probably not the photographers for you. 

3. Black and whites that look like blobs of grey. That's what you get when you all you do is click the 'black and white' button, and the result is a lifeless and boring photo. We work our B&Ws so that there is actually 'black' and 'white,' as well as a sharp, vibrant edge that turns an ordinary image into a classic.

4. Charging extra for ownership and copyright of your images. It's your story. It belongs to you. Keeping the files from you traps those memories in a place where they can't do any good, and that's just. . . wrong. With us, you'll get a flash drive packed with high resolution copies of every single image we take. 

Our coverage of your wedding day will start wherever your wedding preparation begins—whether it's the hair-salon, the bridal boutique or your mother's spare bedroom, we'll be there to document the transformation. 

About half of our favorite images of the whole day come from the prep! It's often the first thing that clients want to cut out in order to save costs, but it's central to the tradition of the wedding day as a ritualized transition from single to married life. Clothing, make up and hair decorations, applied and adorned by those we're closest to, have been essential parts of ritual throughout human history, and for good reason; they're powerful ways of marking a major turing point in life. 

This physical change isn't just for your 'audience' of friends and family, it's for you, the bride or groom to be. The moment when a bride first sees herself in the mirror wearing a wedding dress, on her wedding day, is every bit as significant as when her partner first sees her; it's something that's important for us to capture because it often gets lost in the chaos of the day.

More often than not, Joey will go with the bride and Sarah will go with the groom for prep, although not all the time. Joey is very particular about how bridal prep is captured, and loves making a perfect series of images for the bride to show her transformation. The guys' preparation is usually a little more bawdy but no less momentous, and Sarah is great at making guys look great while still being guys. Just an FYI though, if everyone is doing shots and you offer one to Sarah she'll have to decline, because if the drinks then the pictures will be blurry :-(

The time just before the ceremony is a good time to grab some casual, candid group shots; everyone is fully dressed and ready, but they haven't had time to mess up / sweat through their outfits yet. Depending on how much time we have, we might even do some of the 'formal' shots then. This is also the high point of anxiety for the day, so it's a great time for candids; lots of hand-wringing and nervous glances.

Once the ceremony starts Joey usually becomes the 'safe' shooter, making sure he gets all of the 'required' shots of your ceremony–the bride walking down the aisle, the ring exchange, the first kiss, all of that stuff. Sarah, on the other hand, becomes the 'fun' shooter, since she's free to grab candid shots of, for example, your Mom crying while she's watching you exchange vows, or the way your husband looks at you the first moment he sees you. 

One question we get a lot is about how close we'll get to the bridal couple during the ceremony, and the answer is as close as you want us to be. No matter what kind of camera gear you're using, there's much more freedom in composition of an image if you have the ability to get close to it, as well as to be farther away. Using a wide angle lens and getting close to a wedding ceremony creates an image that you simply can't get from 80 feet away with a telephoto lens. Of course, you might want to think twice about giving us free reign if it's going to provoke the ire of your family (particularly if they're the ones paying for the wedding). The bottom line is, if don't want us to be visible at all, we can hide in the back and sides of the church and be ninjas, and we'll still get great photos of your wedding ceremony, but if you want the greatest variety of images then we're happy to get closer–it's entirely up to you. 

After the ceremony is traditionally when the 'formal' pictures are done–the big family photos that everyone wants to print and frame. If it’s a church wedding, we’ll need to set up some lighting gear near the alter first, but at the most we’ll be ready to go 10 minutes after the ceremony ends. We like to get the family photos done at this point because 

• Everyone in the family we need to take pictures of is usually there

• They haven’t had anything to drink yet.

• They’re motivated to cooperate so they can get to the reception and start drinking. 

If both Sarah and Joey are there, Sarah becomes the ‘people wrangler’ at this point which allows Joey to focus entirely on getting all of the technical stuff right. She’ll move everyone in and out of frame, help people get posed and generally command the space. One thing that really helps her is having a list of photos you want taken. Please make a list! It makes everything much more efficient, and if your guests are waiting around to have their picture taken they’ll be much happier if they feel like things are moving. 

Following the formal group shots, we normally move on to the bridal party photos. Just about everybody wants these done someplace OTHER than where they got married–a park, a museum, an abandoned building that gives off a industrial vibe–which we are wholeheartedly in agreement with, 

As wedding photographers, bridal party shots are what push us the most. For one thing, we need to make the pictures happen-we can't just be flies on the wall like we are during the ceremony. They also usually involve lots of people, which makes composition more challenging, Our goal is to create images that say 'these people were here today for Jack and Jill's wedding, and they're dressed up, but they're still these people' without being trite, corny or offensive. Above all, we try to bottle up the joy of the day and let those photos shake it up then spray it all over everyone who looks at them, forever.

After working our mojo as portrait photographers for the family and bridal party photos, we usually slip back into journalist mode at the reception which, if you think about it, is pretty action packed and so provides us with plenty to document. Depending on which traditions you're into, there could be:

• A grand entrance where each couple enters the dining room to a formal announcement, applause and fanfare.

• A toast by the Best Man, Maid of Honor, and maybe Mom and Dad

• The First Dance

• Parent-sibling dances

• The groom-carried-around-the-room-in-a-chair dance

• Bouquet Toss, and for the more adventurous, the Garter Thing,

• Our new favorite, The Shoely Wed Game.

• Lots of glass clanging and kissing!

...not to mention some of more interesting ethnic ones. Like the ceremony, at the reception we try to balance staying out of the way with getting the best shots, and our clients often can't believe how many great candids we come away with! 

If it’s a summer wedding, we’ll grab the bride and groom for about 20 minutes later on, for we affectionately call a ‘couple’s shoot,’ a few shots of them together on the evening of their wedding. We wait until then to do it because we want the sun low in the sky, throwing out all kinds of delicious, orange-y light, and there’s usually a lull in right after dinner anyway so it works out well. Our hope is always that, when (not if) you get in an argument over something stupid a few years down the road, you’ll see one of these photos somewhere and remember that you were crazy about each other not too long ago, and that in this short little life love is the greatest gift we can hope for. 

A question we get a lot is ‘when will you leave’ or ‘how late will you stay?’ Simply put, we don’t work by the hour, so we’ll stay as long as we need to stay. At every wedding there comes a point when everyone’s had 2.6 drinks and the Electric Slide has come and gone, when the pictures we’re taking go from being ‘memories’ to being ‘evidence.’ That’s when it’s time for us to go.

The next day we’ll upload your photos to Dropbox. Wait, did we say Dropbox? Yes, Dropbox.

• It looks great on any platform—desktop, smartphone, tablet, whatever

• It’s easier to navigate than any of the fancy website galleries we’ve ever seen, 

• You can very easily download images you like, or the whole album, immediately. 

• It’s super easy to share - just send the album link to whoever you want!

We’ll keep all of your wedding photos on hand for at least six months after the wedding, but usually a lot longer (OK to be honest - we have yet to delete a wedding).. And that’s pretty much it, at least until you ask us to do photos of the baby, or your anniversary, or just because!