Real Couples // A Washington, DC Affair: Diana+Monroe

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Real Couples // A Washington, DC Affair: Diana+Monroe

From a photographer's perspective, most weddings are fairly difficult, both mentally and physically, and we're usually completely exhausted at the end of the day. However, Diana and Monroe proved to us that weddings can be easy. Though their wedding day started early (8am) and we had a wedding the night before (something we never do), we happily and effortlessly cruised through their day while they smiled, laughed, and celebrated with a very intimate crowd of about 25. The shared exchanges of joy were endless, the weather was perfect, and their day ran like a well-oiled machine thanks to the team of Taylor and Hov.

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Real Couples // Anniversary in Lisbon, Portugal: Jay + James

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Real Couples // Anniversary in Lisbon, Portugal: Jay + James

ay: In 2008, I was moving to New York City from New Jersey and wanted to make new friends, so I decided to look through MySpace and came across James’ profile. We decided to meet up for our first date in NYC, and from the moment we met the sparks were flying, and the chemistry was undeniable. One year in, and we moved in together, and since then we have been inseparable. We have experienced so many great adventures together including getting married in 2012. Once married, we wanted to do something completely selfish and unexpected before we start our own family, and we decided to move to Portugal and see the world.

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Molly Reeder Is Baking Cakes and Bringing Visibility to Women Chefs and Bakers

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Molly Reeder Is Baking Cakes and Bringing Visibility to Women Chefs and Bakers

We first met Molly last February around the time she was planning the Galentine's Day pop-up in Charlottesville, Virginia. It quickly became clear she was a talent to be reckoned with, both as an artist and a baker. She creates beautiful wedding cakes, as well as portraits of couples, but her influence goes beyond the wedding industry. She has developed an artistic series focused on highlighting women bakers and chefs. While the kitchen may stereotypically be the place for women domestically, commercial kitchens have often excluded women and made professional baking and cooking a male-dominated industry. She wants to change that, and step one is to bring focus to the women who are already excelling in the professional realm. Read on to learn more!

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Real Couples // Tennessee Wedding for World Travelers: Emily+Mo

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Real Couples // Tennessee Wedding for World Travelers: Emily+Mo

I find myself in awe of Emily and Mo and their enthusiasm for the lives that they lead and the places that they have lived and visited. You see, they are both world travelers; Emily is originally from Maryville, TN and Mo is originally from India. They met at a polo match in Africa. That is where they fell in love, and that is where they were wed in a simple ceremony.

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White Privilege and Inclusion in the Wedding Industry

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White Privilege and Inclusion in the Wedding Industry

So something pretty interesting happened last week. A well-known conference for wedding industry creatives, Creative at Heart, posted its speaker line-up on Instagram, encouraging folks to sign up for early bird registration. The photo shows a grid of 26 smiling faces, all of them white. The post inspired 95 comments and counting. After a handful of yay!s, woo!s, and heart-emojis, Stacy Reeves wrote, "Extremely disappointing to see a sea of caucasian faces with no diversity. You are not creating an inclusive and welcoming place for women of color here." Mic drop.

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Real Couples // A Central Park Ceremony: Valdora + Isabel

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Real Couples // A Central Park Ceremony: Valdora + Isabel

Valdora and Isabel put their love and their desires for the day first. Which meant an early morning intimate wedding ceremony under the Bethesda Terrace in Central Park with only their closest friends in attendance. Later in the afternoon they invited a larger group of friends and family to celebrate a small ceremony, dinner and dancing a few hours north of New York City. It reflected their goals to create a day that invited their loved ones to be a part of their love, all while sticking to their guns in regards to having a small and beautiful wedding where they felt comfortable sharing vows and tears and promises. Most important to them was that their ceremony reflected their feminist values. In keeping with this, they entered their ceremony space together: this was a visual reflection of supporting each other's decision to proactively commit to continuing their partnership founded on equality, communication, and personal growth. They left the order of reciting their vows up to chance.

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Book Review: Fun Size Weddings

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Book Review: Fun Size Weddings

The pink-haired genius behind Pop! Wed Co. wrote a book, and it is a gift to introverts and style-lovers everywhere. I don't care if you're never getting married, the photos in this book alone will get your heart pitter-pattering for that elusive concept of love once more.  If you are getting hitched and haven't considered the idea of a "tiny wedding" before, you absolutely will after picking up this handy guide to planning a stress-free, personalized ceremony and photo sesh with your lovah and loved ones.

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Put a Ring on It: One Couple's Alternative to Traditional Wedding Rings

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Put a Ring on It: One Couple's Alternative to Traditional Wedding Rings

Every couple wants an engagement ring that perfectly reflects the union of their two personalities. But when my now-husband, Bill, decided to propose, he had something more to consider: my sensitive skin doesn’t let me wear metal.

What’s a groom to do? He found a solution both beautiful and possible in a ring made entirely of wood by David Finch. Finch produces handmade rings at Touch Wood, the company he and his wife, Nicola, run from their off-the-grid farm in western Canada. 

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On the Social Pressures around Weddings and How to Maintain a Sense of Self Despite Them

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On the Social Pressures around Weddings and How to Maintain a Sense of Self Despite Them

I think part of the reason I struggle with having a wedding is that I am new to it. I have identified as a queer, white woman for years. I have had years to grapple with heteropatriarchal systems and my position as a financially privileged white person, even before I had a critical vocabulary to discuss them. But I am only newly a bride-to-be and only newly have to confront the related assumptions that are made about me.

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Real Couples // Romantic With a Cup of Geek: Kelli + Jared

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Real Couples // Romantic With a Cup of Geek: Kelli + Jared

Kelli met Jared online and found him witty and charming. She couldn't wait to meet him in person. After a couple of awkward moments (like only first dates can deliver) they found out they are passionate about books, coffee, video games and everything geek. Jared was so excited at the end of the date that he couldn't wait. He called her the same day. 

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Real Couples // Two Humbly Extravagant Weddings: Julie + Christina

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Real Couples // Two Humbly Extravagant Weddings: Julie + Christina

Julie and Christina are an interfaith, interracial lesbian couple who enhance, rather than diminish, each facet of their individual lives in their wedding(s!). The pair, who met playing roller derby in Ohio, hosted their first wedding at a gorgeous synagogue in San Francisco followed by an all-out reception at Fire House 8. Their follow-up wedding was held in their home state of Ohio with only their closest friends and family. This is a couple who really knows where their values lie and were able to create the best of all worlds: the extravagant, fun and exciting San Francisco wedding contrasted with a humble, family-oriented celebration in the majestic fall forest of Hocking Hills, Ohio. Their story is beautiful; the pictures speak for themselves. Julie & Christina’s magnetic energy truly comes through in this intoxicating series of photos.

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Breastfeeding on Your Wedding Day: Balancing Being a Mother and a Bride

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Breastfeeding on Your Wedding Day: Balancing Being a Mother and a Bride

Wedding photographer Chelo Keys snapped a photo three years ago of Alicia Caldwell breastfeeding her infant daughter on her wedding day. When Chelo shared the photo on social media, she met resistance from “people who felt that breastfeeding should be a private moment or didn't feel it met the definition of a bridal portrait.”  While she disagreed with those opinions, she didn’t want to “subject Alicia to unnecessary hate,” so she took the photo down, and it has remained dormant for the last three years.

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Real Couples // A Whovian-Inspired Wedding: Amy + Peter

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Real Couples // A Whovian-Inspired Wedding: Amy + Peter

Peter and I met in teacher's college over a mutual love of Doctor Who and all things nerdy. Over the last seven years our relationship has taken us through all sorts of adventures including living and teaching in the far north of the James Bay area. We've come a long way through pregnancy loss, the birth of our son, and working in isolation 1500 km from family. Our wedding was the perfect way to celebrate our little family and what it means to be us. We couldn't think of a better way to do that than a Doctor Who-inspired wedding that showcased our personalities and artistic style as a couple. The day was an intimate gathering of close friends and family in a hidden historical gem in Toronto called the Arts and Letters Club. Here we celebrated our love of each other and the ridiculous nerdy obsessions that make us us and brought us together in the first place. We had a lot of fun sneaking references from the show into the event to create a wedding that was both elegant for those who didn’t catch the references, and entertaining for those who did. 

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Keeping It Real with Shawnee Custalow of A Lovely Photo

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Keeping It Real with Shawnee Custalow of A Lovely Photo

Happy Wednesday, y'all! Today we want to introduce our amazing sponsor, Shawnee Custalow of A Lovely Photo! She has been a strong supporter of Catalyst since the beginning. She also attended {un}convention Brooklyn, helped us to organize the Out of the Box Challenge, and has photographed some of our favorite #PhotoFriday posts to date (like this one and this one).

Shawnee took some time to give us a behind the scenes look into her photography business and share how she is disrupting the wedding industry by focusing on inclusivity.

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5 Steps to an Empowering Perspective Shift While Planning Your Wedding

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5 Steps to an Empowering Perspective Shift While Planning Your Wedding

In most of the wedding planning world, "styling" your day means deciding what you want everything to look like and then buying all the stuff you'll need to make it look like that...

It's all fun and games at first, but eventually the whole decor choosing process can start to feel a bit out of control.

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Real Couples // Sharon & Michelle: A Celebration of Mindfulness and Love

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Real Couples // Sharon & Michelle: A Celebration of Mindfulness and Love

While many couples get lost in the minutiae of seating charts, the number of flowers in each centerpiece, and other such details for the so-called "perfect" wedding, Sharon and Michelle's intent was much different: to this couple, the perfect wedding was a day of mindfulness and love.

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Real Couples // Off-Grid Hippie Uzbek Festival Wedding: Nodira + Alex

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Real Couples // Off-Grid Hippie Uzbek Festival Wedding: Nodira + Alex

This wedding was a game changer due to the both the creative and brilliant multicultural couple Nodira and Alex and the amazing experience they put on for their guests (and me!). Nodira and Alex wanted their wedding to create a unique community-building experience out in nature with all of their friends and family for a weekend. Most of the guests camped out in tents on the property, Moon Mountain Lodge, which is a beautiful off-the-grid place in Northwest Washington State.

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