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!

My Grandparents recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary and we knew we had to do something special (because they're the best) so we contacted some of our vendor friends, including the ladies at Bridal Suite Boutique, Ivy On Main Florals, and Christine Swope (who provided not only hair and makeup, but a hair cut and style for Granddad too!)

Grandmom was more nervous than anyone; she had never gotten any kind of professional hair and makeup done, let alone ‘fancy pictures’, so we had to reassure her that she was going to rock this thing. Once we zipped her into her dress it seemed like some of her nerves were relieved.

Granddad wasn’t quite as nervous (and if he was he didn’t let on), and he was cracking jokes the whole time in typical George Brown fashion. We dressed him up, and he looked so dapper!

We brought Granddad into our photography studio for a little “first look”.

We took elegant photos on one of our studio sofas before heading out back behind the mill that our studio is in. With the old buildings and the little forest by the creek, we had quite a few charming places to photograph them, and they have such natural chemistry together that it wasn’t hard to catch a lot of sweet moments.

I sent a photo of Ginger's original wedding dress to the ladies at the Bridal Suite Boutique hoping to find a modern, similar style dress as the one she wore on her wedding day. They chose this dress by Maggie Sottero, and she looked amazing in it!

Almost the entirety of the shoot consisted of Granddad cracking jokes, which would in turn cause Grandmom to break out in laughter. She would usually return with a coy comment as Grandad gave her a kiss on the cheek.

As we talked and laughed with them, we asked them if they had any advice for young married people, to which they replied: don’t go to bed angry, be prepared to forgive, always, because you just have to do it, and maintain a good sense of humor.

(That last bit is Granddad’s personal favorite.)