Click the photo to see the first part of Courtney and Eli’s Wild and Wonderful Weston, West Virginia Winery Wedding!  (Now THAT is alliteration!)

My 2010 wedding season officially began this weekend, with Courtney and Eli’s beautiful (and tasty!) wedding at Lambert’s Vintage Wines in Weston, West Virginia. This was my first wedding of the year and my first wedding on Canon gear, so I got a bit excited and shot a lot more than usual.   (This is despite it being rainy all day, which you’d think would slow me down.)

The good news: I have a LOT of photos I want to share. Put it this way… I used almost all my CF cards, narrowed it down for my sneak peeks, narrowed those down to my favorites to edit, narrowed those down to the best of the best, and I STILL ended up with over 100!

The bad news: 100 photos is too many for one blog post, so you’ll have to view them in parts. This is part 1, featuring the prep shots, a few wedding party photos, and the ceremony.

I rented a 17-40L and a 45mm tilt-shift lens for this event. I didn’t use them much, but I did enjoy trying some tilt-shifting during the prep.

Here’s Courtney, the bride-to-be.  I would just like to take a moment here to add that having that little round mirror was FUN.  It was easier to shoot than a hand-held mirror or particularly a wall-mounted mirror, because I could walk around all sides of it (hint, hint for future brides).

One of my favorites:

I love these next two because they remind me of old Hollywood.  I know the first one breaks a million composition rules (are there a million composition rules?), but I love it anyway.

Some of you might wonder how in the world I ended up with a wedding in West Virginia, 4 hours from my usual coverage area.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet and my personal creative snooping prowess (this is related, I promise), I found out last winter that I lived down the street from one Miss Emily Porter.  Emily is a fantastically talented photographer and a really fun, generous person.  We became Facebook friends, and when she heard I was trying to get started in wedding photography, she let me second shoot for her.  Anyway, Emily has since moved back where she came from (West Virginia), and I have enjoyed following her work and her climb to the top tier of WVa Wedding Photography .

“But this is Natalie Gibbs’ blog.  I love Natalie.  Why should I care about Emily Porter?” you ask.

Because Emily Porter was the maid of honor in Courtney’s wedding, and since the maid of honor can’t shoot the wedding while also maid of honoring, she referred Courtney to me.

(Told you it was related.)

Here’s Emily getting simultaneously teased and tilt-shifted.  Now THAT’S a feat.

And here come the wedding clothes!

Above is Eli’s sister, Hannah, who smiled like this the WHOLE day.   She was so much fun.

I love these next black and whites.

A few wedding party photos:

Introducing: the men.

Ceremony time!

I always think it’s neat to see what different couples include in their ceremonies.Courtney and Eli had a really neat service that integrated traditional Jewish and Christian traditions, along with some cool new trends.  They had the families pour sand instead of lighting candles, there were readings of all sorts, a brass quintet played, and Eli got to smash a glass at the end.  I also loved that I could walk on top of the building and steal a few shots from above.

Mazel Tov!

Check back in the next few days for part 2, or head over to Facebook and look through the fan page album if you want a head start.  I’ll be adding to it little by little.