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!
It's not uncommon to have your ceremony location and reception location be far apart, and if you're considering a remote location, you might have to consider how guests get back and forth from the venue to their hotel. Renting buses or limos can be a great way to provide a thoughtful service to your guests, but it can be hard to know who to trust for your wedding day transportation.
Read MoreThere weren’t many sentimental locations in our city that we could use for our engagement session (unless we did it at Steak ’n Shake where we had our first date) so we decided to leave it up to our photographer, Jasmine. Jasmine amazed us yet again. She gave us a few suggestions and showed us previous engagement sessions at each location, and we loved the look of the battleground, so that’s the one we chose.
One thing I'm looking forward to about being married (other than the typical cliché of spending the rest of my life with my best friend) is being able to call Megan my wife, sharing a last name, and knowing that she will forever be my family.
Read MoreMy clients are a real power couple. They are dream clients — successful, stylish and confident. When they arrived for their session, I was blown away by their attire. I immediately thought they looked red carpet ready. So when I saw the red carpet at the location, which isn't normally there, I knew it was fate. It was perfect. I try to show my clients' style and personality in my images. I believe this photo does that. It represents black excellence and black love, two things that aren't really shown in main stream media.
Read MoreKate and I first met online New Years Eve 2016. We were both looking to make new friends and the very next day went on a hike together to a local waterfall. After getting to know each other over a few months, we attended our local film festival. Before one of the shows, a woman was performing an odd feat outside: she was attempting to lift a fifty pound weight chained to her EYELIDS (?!). Kate, like many in the crowd, was totally into it. Meanwhile I grabbed her arm, hid behind and tried not to throw up at the thought of it.
For some reason after that, we just felt closer. So thanks, weird eyelid lady! And luckily, her eyelids remained intact after she accomplished the lift. During the movie, it was total junior high butterflies as we awkwardly tried to hold each other's hands. After that it became pretty apparent that we both felt a lot more than friendship.
Read MoreMichael and I met on Facebook actually! We met through a mutual friend while we was living in Daytona and I was living in Tampa. After years of being friends online, he decided to drive down and we had our first official date at a Red Robin in the mall near my apartment at the time. We connected so well that first meeting and began our relationship soon after.
Read MoreWhen Amber Robinson showed us the photos from a glam "just because love session" she did with her parents, I knew we had to show them to you. I asked Amber to interview her parents, too, and she mixed in her own questions with some of mine. Here is their interview, and these incredible photos.
Read MoreHow to diversify portfolios is a topic that comes up frequently in photography groups on Facebook. It generally looks something like this: “I want to start photographing gay weddings but don’t have any gay clients… what do I do?” or “I need make my portfolio less white/straight… should I do a model call?” A few of those conversations have resulted in white people getting called out for tokenizing members of marginalized communities and, frequently, those who were called out responded with mild (or not so mild) outrage and wondered how to get away from their straight white client base if they can’t do model calls for LGBTQ2S+ folks or POC to expand their portfolios.
There is very limited information regarding tokenism as it pertains to fine arts generally and photography portfolio building specifically. This article is an attempt to compile the information I did find and present it in a way that is applicable to the photography industry. It might seem straightforward and obvious to some, but I think it is needed
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Allie and Ywanarai had the most warm and loving Lightner Museum wedding. St. Augustine is always on my top favorite locations to photograph. There are so many hidden alleyways, cobblestone roads, palm trees, gorgeous stone buildings, and gorgeous natural backdrops. The two brides got ready in separate houses, down the street from one another, and did a really sweet and intimate first look. Ywanarai was so nervous as she could hear Allie walking down the steps, walking toward her. The look on Ywanarai's face when Allie turned around was priceless. She couldn't help but just grab her and hug her as soon as she saw her gorgeous bride.
Read MoreWe have loved Latoya Dixon for a long, long time. She has been a huge supporter of Catalyst, our keynote speaker at the last {un}convention, and is the leader of The Queen Photographers, who sponsor our Photo of the Week series. But Latoya is more than just a major part of our community, she is also a vendor who knows how to connect with her clients on a very personal level, resulting in some truly amazing photos. That's why we are so thrilled to have her join our vendor directory!
Read MoreWe met in 2011, just before graduating high school. We went on to date others before finding our way to one another, in 2013, when I delivered Jess coffee to work. We went through a series of challenging events—moves, jobs, and emergency surgeries—that required for each of us to spend a year apart. We’ve been happy nesting in our cozy little studio apartment since June of 2016.
The deal was that since I asked Jess out, I’d be ready to get engaged when she was. If it was up to me we would’ve eloped right there! Although I had been hoping the proposal would come, I was surprised when it did. Jess had me swept up by the sea when she got down on one knee!
Read MoreOur debut styled shoot, WE ARE YOUNG, is about diversity and exploring the ways in which weddings can look and love can be expressed. That beautiful weddings include imagery, past rustic, chic, and pastels.
We especially wanted to celebrate young black love, which we often times feel is underrepresented. WE ARE YOUNG is a representation of the vision that many millennials like ourselves share toward humanity: that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
Read MoreSouth Carolina wedding photographer Jessica Hunt sees it as her responsibility to advocate for diverse representation by photographing awesome couples and publishing their images on popular wedding blogs. In 2017 she published 75 times.
Read MoreI met Jason on a online dating site; when I saw his gorgeous profile pic I jokingly said to myself, "Hmmm, he could be my future husband." I read his profile and decided to message him but he ignored me. He continuously checked my profile but would not respond to my message. Eventually he messaged me back and we began chatting. after about a two weeks or so Jason asked me out but my schedule was so busy because I was in my entering into my second year of graduate school. Eventually I agreed to a date and we went mini golfing at 9 AM! We dated for about 3 months. I had my guards all the way up because he was just too nice... a complete gentleman overall, but he seemed too good to be true. I came up with every excuse possible—school was too overwhelming, I didn't want to settle down; however Jason assured me he wouldn't be a distraction and to trust him and trust my heart. His kind heart and consistency essentially broke my walls down, and I allowed myself to fall in love. He would tell me randomly I would be his wife... just wait.
Read MoreWe met in college. We were actually both dating other people when we became friends. We talked all the time and could not wait to be around each other. The relationship eventually became something more and we broke it off with our other partners. We both knew from the very beginning that there was something special between us and despite some drama in the beginning (ending our other relationships and Michele's family not being supportive), we made it and have never been happier.
Read MoreThere are a lot of voices out there telling us to go paperless in this new digital world, and now with Paperless Post, you can even consider going paperless with your wedding invitations. In case you're on the fence about going paperless with this super important part of your wedding, here are five reasons why you should definitely consider it.
Read MoreWe first connected with Tyler Adams aka The Girl Tyler in November 2016 at {un}convention RVA, and we were thrilled to have her be our official event photography at {un}convention. Tyler is a joy of a human and a total joy to work with, and so we could not be more thrilled to add her to our vendor directory. Couples in the Norfolk, Virginia area (and beyond) get real excited to work with this rock star!
Read MoreI saw Kaidra's work on Facebook and it looked amazing! I know that she's photographed people of diverse backgrounds and identities before, so we felt super comfortable working with her. We were just about to move into a new place at the time so we wanted some photos we could decorate our home with. I had to do some convincing to get Ace involved—she's not as narcissistic as I am—but she definitely knows we look hot as a couple so she obliged. We love to get dressed up and have a good time so it was really incredible to have Kaidra document our love in that way.
Read MoreFor the ceremony, I wore all traditional jewelry, except for the finger rings and the nose ring because it was too much jewelry for me. I don't normally wear jewelry and they were a bit uncomfortable. I wore a maang tikka on my forehead, which I loved, a few heavy diamond necklaces and earrings, ankle bracelets, and red and white bangles, which are the traditional wedding colors. We exchanged not only rings but also Mangal Sutras (diamond and black onyx necklaces bought in India) during the ceremony. We also got wedding Henna or Mehndi done before leaving LA on our hands and feet. It took hours to be applied and we had to sit still and sleep without rubbing it off so it would stain as dark as possible, which was so hard! As is the tradition we got each other's first name initial hidden in our Henna and during the first look we had to find it on each other.
Read MoreI think that people have romanticized the idea of self care; we don’t talk about what it really means to take care of self. What I want you to do when thinking about self care is to keep in mind those things that you need so badly. This includes the physical, mental, emotional, and financial. What is it going to take you to get to the place you need to be in these areas?
Read MoreWe flew back to Ohio in the winter of 2016 to view venues, and in about one foot of snow. We visited several places, but the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland (MoCa is how it is branded) fit with our contemporary theme and was totally unique. We were able to purchase the entire venue for six hours and have all the art exhibits to ourselves and our guests. It was something most of our guests said they never had experienced before.
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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!
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