As resilient as they are, the wedding was quickly relocated to another [indoor] venue and by evening, Akil and Shleen were husband and wife. As they realized after receiving their wedding photographs, the one thing missing were wedding images of them together after the ceremony. We're certain that with all of the last minute changes everyone was thrown a little off their game. I still can't believe they pulled it off, rearranging and changing venues the morning of the wedding... i mean, that's guest notifications, caterers, floral deliveries, etc. on the day of the wedding... during a flood... ack!
Fast forward to May 2011 and Akil and Shleen are celebrating their first anniversary. What does a young husband get his wife for their first anniversary? If you're Akil, you want your bride to have the wedding images she'd always wanted and so he set about to make that happen.
He rented the same tux, ordered his bride the same bouquet and called us to book a photo session. (We were not the photographers at their wedding; that photographer had since moved out of state.)
We set a date for the shoot at the original location. Two days before the shoot the weather reports called for massive rain; and rain it did...
We rescheduled the shoot for the next week. Again, it rained heavily...
We rescheduled the rescheduled shoot for later in the week. All reports looked good.
The day of the shoot brought light rain, but nothing on the scale we had already dealt with and it ended early in the day, so with beautiful overcast skies (our favorite for outdoor sessions) we met at the sunken garden just before gloam when the light is so luscious you want it served up on plate for dinner.
So, with the groom in his tux and the beautiful bride in her gown, with the bouquet and the boutineer, we recreated what would have been their wedding day pictures. Who says you can't have a do-over?
Akil and Shleen are clearly in love; relaxed in a knowing way that we're certain was helped along by the challenges of the first day of their life as husband and wife; a challenging and stressful situation that they conquered with grace and were laughing about a year later.
And what a thoughtful new husband Akil is to not only think of such a wonderful gift, but to work towards and stress over yet three more schedule changes due to flooding.
They have not only survived, they have conquered the 1,000 day flood and it's anniversary downpours. We say that bodes very well for their life together...
Congratulations, Akil and Shleen, many times over!
