Real Weddings, Advice, & Inspiration

Catalyst Wedding Company highlights weddings by and for game-changers. We seek to amplify and empower voices and viewpoints that are usually missing from the Wedding Industrial Complex. We're a community of badass wedding professionals who love all things funky, fresh, diverse, unique, and personality-driven; we convene twice yearly for (un)convention, a collaborative workshop, styled shoot, and dinner party. We're also the publishers of Catalyst Wedding Mag, a resource for couples looking for inspiration and affirmation that doing things differently in wedding-world is not only ok, it's wonderful!

We met in an accounting evening class in a small college in a tiny town that has the nickname “CoMo,” which stands for Columbia, Missouri. I would have never thought the person whom I shared the textbook with once that day would become my lifetime partner.

We are both from Vietnam and both have similar challenges adapting to life here in the States. You would have thought that would make us get along so well that we would have no conflict at all. However, reality struck us hard. Like any other couple we fight, we don’t communicate well with each other, we made mistakes, we separated, we survived a four-month long-distance relationship, we got married, we fought again and again, we lost hope, we tried to mend things, we learned from our mistakes, and we have been loving each other more than ever since.

Orlando, Florida has always been a destination on our bucket list, and thanks to the dirt cheap air tickets, we were able to check it off the list. During the trip, I got to reunite with my wonderful high school friend, Sally, who is a talented photographer. She did an amazing job capturing the real emotions of a couple celebrating their second anniversary. Her work wowed us, and we can’t wait to print these photos and hang them in our house.

Words by Vi, photos by Sally Nguyen

Asian-American engagement session in Orland

couple choosing ice cream at their engagement session

getting ice cream at your engagement session

fun urban engagement session in a store front

Quirky colorful Orlando engagement photos

SALLY NGUYEN

I am Sally, the main photographer of Simon and Sally who love to capture everything in the most creative and beautiful of ways. We are currently located in Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida yet have travelled all over to capture elopements and intimate weddings. Simon and I focus mainly on intimate weddings, elopements and lifestyle family photography.