Jennifer and Jay (finally!) get Married at Liljebeck Farms

It took a full year longer than originally planned, but Jennifer and Jay were finally married at Liljebeck Farms in front of their family and friends.  The reason for the delay?  The same thing that forced many other couples to delay their planned weddings for as long as three years – the Covid pandemic.  I first talked with Jen way back in May 2021, and shortly afterwards she booked me for a wedding in March 2022.  But things obviously did not work out as planned, and early in 2022 the date was changed to 2023.

The funny thing is that while we were emailing or talking by phone quite a bit we never met face to face until I took their “official” engagement photos just before Christmas in 2022.  You can see those photos by visiting this link.  At this point Jen and Jay had a daughter named Olivia, a son named Emmett, and Jen was about 7 months pregnant with child number three (Alia), who ended up being born about a month before the wedding.

But this post isn’t about that session, it’s about the long-awaited wedding!

The day of the wedding I was at Liljebeck a couple of hours before the scheduled start time for the ceremony, so we’d be able to get a lot of family photos out of the way before the ceremony.  Jen and Jay had decided that they wanted to go “traditional”, and not to see each other until the ceremony.  So we had a plan that would let us get a lot of the family and wedding party photos that did not need both Jay and Jen at the same time taken cars of to cut dwon on photo time after the ceremony.

But the Wedding Gods decided to play with us a bit, and Jen’s hair and makeup took much longer than planned.  Sometimes when this happens the bride will lose it, as she sees all of her careful plans starting to unravel. But not Jen!  She was absolutely as cool as could be; the fact that she was a mother of three probably gave her an entirely different perspective on the whole situation, as well as the ability to roll with the unexpected.  While Jen was getting ready we took photos with Jay and his groomsmen as well as with his family, and I occassionally stopped into Jen’s dressing room to get some shots of the action (chaos?) there.

When Jen was ready we did a different kind of “first look” photo.  Rather than Jay seeing Jen before the ceremony, she wanted to do a first look with her father.  So we set things up and had a very nice first look session with Jen and her Dad, as you will see in the photos below.

By the time Jen was finally finished with her first look with her father guests were already arriving, so we decided to delay the rest of the posed photos until after the ceremony.

Once the guests were seated the ceremony began.  Liljebeck has a very nice room for wedding ceremonies, as you’ll see below.  The Wedding Gods had apparently decided that they’d had enough fun with Jen earlier and the ceremony went perfectly.  At the end of the ceremony, as they recessed down the aisle, Jay and Jen stopped for a kiss while their guests blew bubbles,  a very nice touch and which IMO made a very nice photo!

The reception was great.  Everyone clearly had a wonderful time.  Once dancing began, baby Emmett moved onto the dance floor and showed his stuff.  This kid was quite amazing!  He “danced” along with the adults and had incredible endurance.  The fact that everyone was cheering him on probably helped keep him going.

But as with all good things, the party finally had to come to an end.  And so has this post!  Please check out the photos below, I hope you like them.