Tim & Lucy – Wallalong House Wedding

When I started the drive to Tim and Lucy’s wedding, I was only on my own for about half an hour. As soon as I joined the Hume Highway, I found myself bumper to bumper for hundreds of miles with every other person in Australia trying to escape the confines of this new COVID19 world we find ourselves living in. After a 10 hour drive that should have taken 6, I finally arrived in Wallalong and turned up the dirt road towards the beautiful property that overlooks the floodplains north of beautiful Morpeth, deep in the Hunter Valley. Wallalong house sits on a little hill that looks west toward the setting sun in the afternoons, above the lush farmland and lingering floodwaters.

First up, I see Tim walking towards me with his big welcoming smile. I give him a fist bump and immediately notice Amy, one of my previous brides standing to the side with her new baby. Wow, what an amazing sight that was. I was already feeling like I was at home. And that’s when Lucy came round the corner, her fiery gorgeous red hair blazing in the afternoon sun. I was there to take pictures but that afternoon I was more like an old friend. I knew this was going to be an amazing day. And I was so right.

It’s been 10 months since I made a blog post on my website. Time flies when you have kids to raise, problems to solve of all kinds and a business that stops in its tracks because of a germ that is too small to even see. You find something you didn’t know you had. Time. Lot’s and lots of time. Time to help my children deal with extended isolation. Time to actually be present for a while, imprisoned by the threat of a virus but free of the relentless race from today to tomorrow.

I made my way through Tim and Lucy’s wedding day with a new kind of urgency. A new kind of understanding of when to dive deep and when to lie low. There’s a million and one ways to shoot a wedding day with a camera and I will probably only come up with a few hundred in my lifetime. And that’s OK because theres something that I can’t explain that leads me to the moments that I see, the interactions that matter. The small things that make one foot follow the other. The way the light falls from East to West and West to East. The quiet stuff that needs to be left alone and the loud stuff that needs to be helped along. That’s where the core of what I do lies.

I look at this day and it reminds me of every movie I have ever seen that mattered to me. The way the Landscape leads to people and all the way back again. When I was done, I hopped in my car and drove for 12 hours to be with my Family. Because how could I not? I felt like a magnet was pulling me to a place that I had to be in. Just the same way that Tim and Lucy were in each others orbit that day. My job constantly reminds me what’s truly important and for that I am extremely grateful.

Press play! Everything is better with music.

Wedding Venue – Wallalong House / Wedding Planner & Coordinator – Your Day by Chloe / Dress – Prea James Bridal / Flowers – Ashleigh Palmowski – The Naked Florist / Makeup – Louise Antonjuk / Hair – Nourish Me Beautiful / Celebrant – Tamsin McGarry – Celebrating You / Catering –  Mason Catering / Wedding Band – Top Shelf Live / Music – Ishmael by Caspian – iTunes