Trystan Photography: An Intimate Portrait.

We then proceeded to The Assumption of the Theotokos Orthodox Greek Cathedral (what a mouthful!), which may be the most visually stunning church I have ever seen. Even if your aren’t Greek Orthodox, you really should go down there on a Sunday just to sit in there and experience it. You know how in some churches you get the sense that God is above you, looking down? Here, it’s literally true. There’s a massive Jesus directly above the pews in the ceiling, and he just stares, and stares, and stares. It’s quite beautiful and unsettling at the same time.

Soon after we arrived, the girls arrived in style in a limo of their own and I was pleased to note that their spirits were high (as far as my knowledge it was from Mimosas, not shots of Jameson), because sometimes when the boys have been “enjoying themselves” and the ladies have not, it can be like hot and cold weather fronts colliding. Never good. But in the case of this wedding, we had two evenly matched “wedding party fronts” meeting in central Denver.  Personally, I prefer our clients to be a little “lubricated”, if you will. We all are a little more gregarious when we have a little warmth flowing through our veins, and that plays very well for the way we like to shoot.

As soon as Erinn was ready, we staged a windy “reveal”. The reveal is the moment when the bride and groom see each other for the first time, but before the ceremony. We like to actually stage it with the right setting and lighting, etc. It works out wonderfully every time: you get these amazingly authentic reactions from both of them, and you get to complete a lot of the formal family/wedding party shots before the ceremony so all that’s left afterward is the wonderful couple shots and cool wedding party stuff. Erinn and Kostas’ reveal was no exception: she descended the stairs behind the cathedral and appeared straight out of some kind of fairytale. Kostas turned to see her, and then came forward and embraced her beneath the only Fall foliage left on the property. It was stunning and they are sooooooooo into each other. It makes capturing beautiful moments easy when you get two people completely into each other like they were. And it also helped that Kostas was in a romantic “power-of-the-moment” mood, rather than the “grab-my-wife’s-boobs” mood that he was in later… but I digress.

Being a Greek wedding in a stunning Greek cathedral, and although there was lots of frivolity and rowdiness before and after, the ceremony itself was suddenly quite a grand, beautiful and reverent moment. That’s one of the aspects of the cathedral I appreciated most: no matter what your mood was outside of it, your mood was powerless to resist the sanctuary’s soothing beauty and awe.

And the priests! I can’t say enough about the Greek Orthodox priests! Where other churches can be extraordinarily restrictive upon wedding photographers, the priests at The Greek Cathedral were so very opposite. When we met at the rehearsal to discuss the ceremony, I asked where we could shoot and not shoot, expecting the usual restrictive answer (in general, it seems the more beautiful the church, the less we can do). But no so here! They said we could be anywhere we wanted, even on the dais (which is 50 feet wide), except for where the rug is. Whaaaaaat? I couldn’t believe it: they were so relaxed with the idea of photographers that they were even insisting on shots that I was uncomfortable with, “You should come behind me during the kiss. You can capture the Wedding of Cana mural behind them as they kiss…”

I couldn’t, I would never… I did. And it was a great idea and I love those priests for it. The Assumption of the Theotokos Orthodox Greek Cathedral is my new favorite place to shoot a wedding… period. (If any of the priests happen to read this, could talk about shooting there more? Like getting on a vendor list or something…?)

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1. The Day Begins...
2. The Best Ceremony Venue... Ever!
3. Debauchery at Folsom Field