Like many of my  clients, Edgar and Marisol found me through a friend of a friend whose wedding I had photographed.  As I sat waiting in the coffee shop we had arranged to meet at, it wasn’t hard to spot the enamored couple walking across the parking lot towards me.  Marisol clung to Edgar’s arm like he was ‘her man’ and ‘The Man’, and their approach was punctuated by her giddy excitement and his smile as they paused to embrace and kiss.  She literally threw her arms around his neck, leaning up to kiss him, left leg lifted in that instinctually feminine fashion, lost in the moment.  I let out a silent, “Yessssssss!”, as a photographer could only be so lucky to work with a couple that embodies such romantic chemistry like a natural reflex that doesn’t need direction, motivated by that self-sustaining joy called Love.  Yes, these two had found that crazy thing called Love, or it had found them.

 

Two months later, I was shooting their engagement session at the Del Mar Fair.  Once again, they were lost in the sauce, kissing, as the fun-seeking fair-goers filtered around them.  That was a fun day as a photographer, as it’s not often that I get invited to a giant state fair to run amuck with a newly engaged couple.  I think the unspoken challenge that day was to see how many different and difficult places the two could lock lips in.  Bumper cars: check.  Giant swings: check (i’m still not even sure how they pulled that aerial feat off).  Kissing atop the ferris wheel: check.  I have something of a fear of heights, and I momentarily became aware of this as I found myself hanging half-way out of the ferris wheel seat to get just the right angle on the action.  Theirs was a super fun engagement session.  I didn’t even care that it took me north of 2 hours to get out of the parking lot; at one point, someone started a ‘honk off’, and the entire lot of cars chimed in!

Nearly one year later, I was on my way to the Harbor Island Sheraton Hotel to capture some gorgeous photos of Marisol being transformed into a bride, and Edgar fully realizing his position as ‘her man’.  Marisol has an innocent beauty about her, and she has this uncontrollable smile that comes over her, pulling those around her into her joy.  You could really tell that Edgar was proud to be her man, to be the one to take care her of her.  He’s definitely a man of responsibility and was loving the responsibility that would soon be bestowed upon him as her husband and partner.

I spent several hours that afternoon with the couple and their bridal party shooting at beautiful Coronado Island beach locations that Edgar and I had collaborated on.  It was super windy that day, with the Coronado Bay Bridge and downtown San Diego as the backdrop.  Marisol’s veil nearly took flight twice.  She just cracked up laughing about it, as Edgar tried to secure her veil in the affectionate way that he dotes on her.

The couple arrived at their wedding reception site, the Coronado Cays Yacht Club, via an old-world Italian gondola.  With the san diego sunset glistening on the bay, the pair stood there on the yach club dock, soaking it all in; so excited to finally be living the future that they had looked forward to for so long.