Seattle area wedding at Rattlesnake Lake – Carla & Ben

On Saturday August 22 I was the lucky photographer at the wedding of Carla and Ben, at the Cedar River Educational Center located outside of North Bend on Rattlesnake Lake. This is a very cool venue, and is unfortunately not one that many people are familiar with in the Seattle area. The Center is situated on the east shore of Rattlesnake Lake, near an extremely popular hiking and recreation area, but for some reason its availability for functions such as weddings is mostly unknown. I have done several weddings here, and when Carla and Ben told me this was where their wedding would take place I was very happy, since it is a very picturesque location (which is always a good thing for a photographer)!

This was a fairly small wedding, with just family and a few friends in attendance.  Carla and Ben have been together for a long time, I believe the number that I heard Carla mention is 14 years!  The standing answer when asked if they ever planned to get married was “Sure, we’ll get married when pigs fly!”, which was the unofficial theme of the day.  So to acknowledge that this union was one that neither Carla or Ben had really thought would ever happen, they had special gifts made for all of their guests, a very cool knit pig with a rubber ball inside, so they could be thrown and/or bounced and the pigs would in fact fly, if only for a short time!  The photo at the top of this post is of one of the pigs, which is now occupying a prime spot in my office.

But back to the wedding!  The setting could not have been better, with a sunny (but not hot!) day.  The ceremony took place outdoors on a patio with the Rattlesnake Lake and Rattlesnake Ridge providing a fantastic backdrop.  As well as the traditional vows and ring exchange, Carla and Ben also had a ceremony where they mixed a variety of colored glass beads together.  These beads will now be melted down and turned into a cup of some sort.

After the ceremony we did the standard family shots, then some photos with Carla and Ben around the Center, and then the three of us headed into North Bend for some other photos.  Last winter Ben bought a Tesla, and they wanted to get some photos with the car with a good backdrop.  I had never had the chance to really look at a Tesla “up close and personal” and was very impressed with the car; if it drives anywhere near as good as it looks that is one hell of a car!  So we drove to a new park on the west side of North Bend, where we could set up the car to get Mt Si in the background, and played around taking photos for a bit (see photos below for a few samples).  Then I took Carla and Ben to one of my favorite photo locations in North Bend, where a train trestle crosses the Snoqualmie River on the edge of town.  Another brief photo session there (more samples below) and then it was on to Daniel’s Broiler in Bellevue for the reception.

All in all a very fun day!  It was wonderful working with Carla, Ben and their family and friends, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to work together again in the future.