Kate & Jared’s Wedding
Manheim, PA

There are weddings that feel like productions, with every detail planned months in advance and every moment carefully orchestrated. And then there are weddings like Kate and Jared’s — weddings that feel less like an event and more like a gathering of the people who matter most.

Kate and Jared were married in Jared’s parents’ backyard in a small, casual celebration surrounded primarily by family and a handful of their closest friends. There was no elaborate production team behind the scenes. The people who came to celebrate with them were also the people making the wedding happen. Family and friends handled the decorations, the centerpieces, the food, the music, the makeup, and all the countless little details that come together to make a wedding day possible.

And that was part of what made it so special.

The backyard wasn’t simply a venue. It was home. It was a familiar place filled with people who knew Kate and Jared well, surrounded by the kind of personal details that you simply can’t manufacture in a traditional wedding venue. Everything about the day felt comfortable, personal, and unmistakably theirs.

There was also one particularly important member of the family who made sure he was included in as much of the celebration as possible: their one-year-old son, Riley.

Riley was present throughout the day, and it didn’t take long for him to become one of the most photographed people at the wedding. He had a wonderful way of finding his place in the middle of whatever was happening, naturally becoming part of the day as it unfolded.

That included the ceremony.

When Kate and Jared stood together at their altar, Riley joined them, making the moment feel less like a picture-perfect wedding scene and more like what it actually was: a family beginning this next chapter together. He was part of the story, so naturally, he was part of the ceremony too.

And then there was the veil.

Kate’s long, sheer veil turned out to be an excellent source of entertainment for a one-year-old. Riley happily played with it, pulling and exploring the delicate fabric while his parents continued with the day around him. It was exactly the kind of moment that might not make it into a traditional, meticulously staged wedding album — but it is precisely the kind of photograph that becomes more meaningful as the years go by.

Because one day, Riley will be older. He may not remember this wedding at all. But he’ll be able to look back at these photographs and see himself right there in the middle of it.

The same could be said for Baloo, Kate and Jared’s dog, who also received the appropriate wedding-day attire: his very own tuxedo.

Baloo took his responsibilities seriously enough to make an appearance alongside the family, adding another bit of personality to a day that already had plenty of it. Between the dog in a tuxedo, the toddler playing with the bride’s veil, and the many family members pitching in behind the scenes, there was never any question that this was going to be a particularly formal affair.

The ceremony itself was brief, but its brevity didn’t make it any less meaningful.

Kate’s father officiated, bringing another deeply personal element to the ceremony. Rather than relying on a generic script, Kate and Jared wrote heartfelt vows for one another and took the opportunity to say, in their own words, what this marriage meant to them.

Those vows were emotional. The kind of emotional that is difficult to manufacture and even harder to pose for.

Standing together in front of the people they love, they spoke directly to one another about their relationship and the life they were building together. With family and friends gathered around them — and their son nearby — the ceremony captured something much more important than ceremony itself. It captured the people at the center of this family and the love that brought everyone together.

After the ceremony, we took some time for posed portraits and group photographs. These were the more traditional photographs of the day — the ones that make sure everyone who came to celebrate is represented and that Kate and Jared have those classic images of themselves as newlyweds.

But even these photographs retained the relaxed character of the celebration. There was no need to turn the backyard into a formal studio. The setting, the people, and the relationships were already enough.

And, of course, Riley continued to make appearances.

One of my favorite things about photographing weddings like this is watching the line between “wedding photography” and simply documenting a family disappear. At a large, highly structured wedding, there can be a tendency to think of certain photographs as important and everything else as secondary. But when a wedding is this intimate, everything becomes part of the story.

A child playing.

A parent helping with a detail.

Friends laughing together.

Someone checking on the food.

A family member adjusting a decoration.

A dog wandering through the celebration in a tuxedo.

These moments aren’t interruptions to the wedding. They are the wedding.

After the ceremony and portraits, everyone gathered beneath a tent in the backyard for the reception. Brunch was served, giving the celebration another relaxed and welcoming quality. Rather than a formal evening affair, the reception felt like an extension of the gathering that had been happening all day — family and friends sitting together, eating, talking, laughing, and enjoying the fact that they were all in the same place.

And Riley, after having spent the day making his presence known, eventually joined Kate and Jared for their first dance.

There was one small complication: by this point, Riley had eaten his dinner and was down to nothing but a diaper.

So there they were — Kate and Jared sharing their first dance as husband and wife, with their one-year-old son joining them in only a diaper.

It is an objectively less traditional first-dance photograph.

It is also, in my opinion, a much better one.

It says something about Kate and Jared’s wedding that a moment like that could happen naturally. There was no attempt to make the day conform to some idealized version of what a wedding is supposed to look like. Instead, the day made room for real life. Their son was hungry, he ate his dinner, he took off his clothes, and then he wanted to dance with his parents.

So he did.

That willingness to embrace real life is what made photographing Kate and Jared’s wedding such a joy. Nothing needed to be overly complicated. The people closest to them were there. Everyone pitched in. The food was made by people they knew. The music was part of the gathering. The decorations were created by family. Kate’s father married them. Their son was beside them. Their dog wore a tuxedo.

It was a wedding built by the people who loved them.

And ultimately, that is what I hope these photographs preserve.

Not just what Kate and Jared looked like on their wedding day, but what their wedding day felt like.

The warmth of a backyard gathering. The emotion of vows written specifically for one another. The chaos and sweetness of having a one-year-old in the middle of everything. The unmistakable personality of a beloved dog. The laughter of family and friends. The handmade details. The imperfect moments. The beautiful ones.

Years from now, the photographs of Kate and Jared’s wedding won’t just remind them that they got married. They’ll remind them of who was there, what it felt like to have everyone together, and what their little family looked like at this particular moment in time.

Kate and Jared weren’t simply celebrating the beginning of a marriage.

They were celebrating the family they had already begun building — and inviting the people they loved most to be part of the next chapter.