Let’s get this out of the way first: your wedding is not a content strategy. It’s not a product launch. It is not the final, polished episode of your pre-marriage reality show.
It’s a living, breathing, beautifully chaotic threshold. A one-day, heart-thumping, tear-spilling, laugh-so-hard-you-snort ceremony of becoming.
And right now, the entire Wedding Industrial Complex is screaming at you to do the opposite. To calm down. To color-coordinate. To streamline, optimize, and sanitize the whole human mess of it into a series of flawless, shareable tiles.
I’m here to scream back: Let it be messy.
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Your wedding is not a show. It’s a shared heartbeat.
Forget the “must-have” shot list scraped from a server farm. The algorithm doesn’t know your inside jokes. It can’t replicate the specific way your partner’s nose scrunches when they laugh so hard they’re silent. It has never felt the weight of your grandmother’s hand in yours, paper-thin and strong as steel.
AI can generate a thousand perfect, soulless table settings. It cannot generate the electric silence of a crowd holding its breath as you say the real vows—the shaky, imperfect, yours.
So let’s make a pact. Let’s plan a day that feels like a vinyl record, not a streaming playlist. All warmth, a few intentional scratches, and a depth of sound that gets under your skin.
Here is your manifesto. Print it, scribble on it, tattoo it on your brain:
1. Hire Artists, Not Vendors. Look for the humans whose work makes your stomach flip. The florist who talks about texture and wildness, not just “palettes.” The baker obsessed with flavor, not just fondant. The photographer (hi) who spends the consultation asking about how you met, not just your timeline. You’re not hiring a service; you’re inviting a co-conspirator to witness your truth.
2. Seek the “Unalgorithmable.” Actively chase the moments no AI could predict. The rain that forces everyone into a glitter-strewn, laughing huddle under a tent. The rogue dog that joins the recessional. The ugly-cry that contorts your face into a masterpiece of feeling. These are your heirlooms. Not the things that looked perfect, but the things that felt real.
3. Embrace the Glitch. The strap that breaks. the wrong song that plays, the cake that lists slightly to the left. These are not disasters. They are the secret handshake your wedding day gives you—a private joke you’ll carry forever. Perfection is a cold, hard shell. A glitch is where the light gets in.
4. Prioritize Vibe Over Vision. Your “vision” is a Pinterest board. Your vibe is the air in the room. It’s the collective sigh after you kiss. It’s the thrum of the dance floor when your weird uncle and your coolest friend are somehow doing the same move. Design for feeling. Dim, wild lighting over clinically bright. A killer playlist over a string quartet because it’s “what you do.” Food that tastes like joy, not just looks like art.
5. You Are the Authority. You are not a passive consumer moving through a wedding conveyor belt. You are the sovereigns of this day. If a tradition feels like a costume, burn it. If a “rule” dims your excitement, ignore it. This day is a declaration of how you move through the world together. Let it sound like your voices.
At the end of all this, what do you want to hold?
A USB drive of technically correct, soulless images where you look like a slightly nervous model? Or a set of photographs that are time machines—that, when you hold them, flood you back to the exact temperature, scent, and weight of the moment? The crackle of it.
My job isn’t to manufacture your day. It’s to see it. To sink into its strange, beautiful, authentic hum and translate that heartbeat into light and grain. To document not just what it looked like, but what it felt like.
So go on. Be weird. Be quiet. Be extravagant in your joy. Be a mess.
We’ll be here, ready to remember it all. Not the wedding you were supposed to have.
The one that could only ever, ever belong to you.
Ready to plan a wedding that feels like you, not like content? Let’s talk about what real looks like.
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