There’s nothing like working with people who become a part of your family, just by their warmness and their similarities to you and your own real-life family. Angela, Mike, and their families felt so much like home! Aside from the sore feet and the travel-weary exhaustion, it really didn’t even feel like working. It felt like hanging out with some of your closest friends.

Angela and Mike were married on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina. I usually book about one wedding every year there, and it’s probably one of my very favorite locations to shoot. It’s just got this charm that I haven’t found anywhere else up and down the southeastern coast.

So, they chose Daufuskie because of the charm and the extremely relaxed feeling you get when you’re there. It matched their personalities to a tee; the only way it could possibly have been any better is if they had an all-night bar with a selection of 100+ beers from around the world, and a jukebox.

So, the day of the wedding was so beautiful – it had been raining, POURING, the days leading up to the wedding day, and everyone was pretty sure it would be a rain-out. It wasn’t looking good, even that morning. But seriously, hours before the ceremony time, the clouds almost literally parted. They had the most picture-perfect day I’ve probably ever seen at Daufuskie.

The reception was a lot of fun, most of their guests were on the dance floor the whole night, there were lots of kids roaming around and being cute, and despite it being pitch black in that reception room, it was a lot of fun to shoot. Hard. Hard to shoot, but fun.

The day after the wedding, we all got back together to do some casual family portraits and to eat lunch at her parents’ cottage. It was a little more low-key, like a family barbecue, and it was a really great way to round out the weekend. I left Daufuskie Island tired, but feeling like I’d just been invited into a new, wonderful, amazing family. What a great feeling. What a great job I have.

What IS this? We found it on the beach, and at first we thought it was some organic matter, but at closer inspection Mike decided it was a floater that had somehow… I dunno, turned into a BRAIN. So freaky. If you know what this thing is, please let me know!

When we were walking around on the beach at the day after session, we saw these little translucent tubey things sticking up out of the sand. They would move almost imperceptibly… and once in a while one of them would spit water out! They were TINY little tubes, and they were everywhere. We were FASCINATED. Thinking I’d discovered something really cool, I drove the 5 hours home thinking about how fun it would be to get internet access and start looking these little exotic creatures up!

Clams. They were CLAMS.

Talk about disappointing!!!!