Today on the journal I get to share a wedding for a derby friend of mine at the Denver County Courthouse. In derby life I know her as Tator, as in Devastator and she lives up to her name in the footwork and agility of her jammer skills. Many a time I thought for sure I had hit her out of bounds only to find that her Super Mario Brothers Luigi-style crazy fast tiptoe feet had miraculously saved her leaving me in the dust! But before I wander off into a derby related wormhole I should get back to the subject at hand, Tator’s wedding to her awesome partner Michael!
From here on out I’m going to call her by her government name (Ashley) to go with her sweet government wedding ceremony also known as a civil ceremony or a courthouse wedding. There was a little mix up about which courthouse to meet at, but I’m glad for her that it ended up being the one right next to Civic Center Park that they dress up for the holidays since its pretty there.
In addition to their closest family and friends they brought their adorable German Shepherd/Corgi mix, Barney, as Denver’s cutest ring bearer. After they went inside to discuss bringing the wedding outdoors with the judge, I realized that I would get to have the power of choosing exactly where everyone would get to stand during the short ceremony. I have to make a point of mentioning just how awesome this was. During most wedding celebrations the bride and groom are standing with their backs (or their sides mostly) to the crowd with the officiant facing everyone. I made a snap decision to put the officiant’s back to the onlookers so that I could see Michael and Ashley with their family’s faces as their backdrop in the photos and I really love how it turned out. How often to do you get to see your loved ones mugs during the ceremony as you exchange rings and seal it with a kiss? Maybe it’s not the most ideal set up for say a mountain wedding with epic views in the backdrop but I loved it for this beautiful little intimate courthouse celebration!
After the short and sweet ceremony we walked across the street to use the Greek Ampitheater only to find that the city has blocked off my favorite areas for reconstruction. No matter, we just photographed there using other angles and I love how they turned out. Michael and Ashley are such an easy going, low key couple that they were really fun to photograph and were up for my suggestion to walk by the cute red British style phone booth outside of Pints Pub on our way over to our parked cars. We got some adorable shots there before heading over to The Rio where they were planning to celebrate their nuptials with yummy Mexican food and margaritas. Across the street from The Rio there was a super cute painted door which made for a lovely backdrop as well. I have seen some blogs calling these kinds if weddings “tiny weddings” or “microweddings” in addition to the more well known language of “elopement wedding.” But whatever you want to call it, it was in my eyes a perfect wedding!
Congratulations, Tator and Mike!
Be sure to head over to the WEDDINGS page of my site for more information about wedding photography!
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