Married, and Just Getting Started

Saturday arvo in Hamilton and honestly, you couldn't have ordered up a better one for Vatsal and Laxmi. There's something pretty special about shooting a wedding at the place where someone grew up, Vatsal's family home, all his people around him, that relaxed homely feel you just can't fake anywhere else. You could feel it, family and mates who'd watched this fella grow up now watching him get married. For Laxmi, fresh off the plane from England on her first ever trip to New Zealand and, it was a huge day in every sense. The two of them met over there and got engaged in Bangkok, and now here she was finally getting to say "I do" on the other side of the world. You could tell she'd been counting down to this one for ages.

Once the ceremony and family stuff wrapped up, we snuck off for portraits and made the most of what Hamilton's got going for it. Started at the lake with that soft afternoon light doing all the work for us, then headed into the forest, which Laxmi had specifically asked for, all green and moody, a real contrast to the open water. Copped a bit of a rain shower while we were in there, but it didn't temper their eagerness one bit, if anything it just added to the fun. Wrapped things up with some final frames along the river as the sun got lower in the sky. Chuffed with how it all came together, genuinely one of those days where the couple, the light, and the location all lined up nicely. Big congrats to Vatsal and Laxmi, stoked I got to be part of it.