A Wedding Post: Chris and Susan

To close out our Spring Wedding season with a high note, Chris and Susan got married at a wonderful venue called Val Vista Lakes which has this gorgeous rock waterfall in the background of their ceremony site. This was a different wedding for us as the bride and groom live out of the states so we did most of our communication through email and phone calls to work out a lot of the details.

Chris and Susan live in London, however both grew up in different places... (Sounds like Phoenix :) Susan was born here in the States and Chris was born in New Zealand. This made for a great wedding because they had about 100 out-of-town guests, and all were lively and ready for a wedding party! They had some of the craziest guests I have yet seen at a wedding! :) Emily was at home with the babies so Sarah and I tag-teamed this one; there was definitely not a lack of photo opportunities!

Although we didn't get much of a chance to get to know Chris and Susan, I do want to say that they are such a fun and lively couple! Chris is an oddly quiet person when you first meet him which is interesting because put him in front of people and you have one of the most outgoing grooms I've seen! Susan is also pretty quiet in manner, but she had a great time with her bridesmaids and Sarah and I had a blast capturing the moments of the day with her.

We wish you guys the best in everything! :)

The Beautiful Waterfall at Val Vista Lakes.

Chris doing his thing :)

This was perhaps the most unique thing I have seen at a wedding. Chris's family is Maori, which are the people native to the island of New Zealand. He has hundreds of 1st cousins on his mom's side AND his dad's side of the family! The Maori are HUGE on family and culture, so keeping their culture alive is very important to them! I was blown away when I see a bunch of the guys at the wedding take their shirts off and get on the dance floor! :) What happened next was unreal... they started to do a traditional tribal war dance that, I kid you not, transported us right to some tribal battleground in New Zealand. It was captivating and yet I couldn't help think of how terrified I would have been to see my enemy do that before a battle. This is a Rugby tradition in New Zealand so not all the guys were Maori, but they all knew what they were doing. They presented a gift to Susan, my guess is that it was a way of saying "welcome to your new family". It's really hard to describe in writing other than to say it was the coolest thing I have ever seen at a wedding :).

The intense look on Chris's face here is what I like about this shot. He's Maori, so this is part of his culture. Most of us were entertained by their dance, but for Chris I think it goes much deeper than that. It's his culture so he has a great respect and seriousness for it...

The gift.

Then the party went back to normal but on a more crazy level :)

MJ's 'Thriller' getting out of hand! :)

Congratulations, Chris and Susan! We wish you a lifetime of happiness and a wonderful marriage. :)