I follow a girl on Instagram whose entire feed is just black and white images. It is beautiful. She is a style blogger and while I don’t follow very many, it was the text in her bio that really hooked me. It reads “black and white style shots | images come to life in color on the blog”. Oh my gosh! I LOVED that! It was so inspirational and it got me thinking about images and how, when, and why color matters. I love color and I love black and white and there is a time and place for both, but to me, the emotion in images comes alive in black and white, not color.

Fast forward to the sweetest Valentine’s Day private elopement! Jay is a long-time friend of my husband, Brian, and I was so so honored that he and Dianna asked me photograph their wedding ceremony. As they prepare to welcome their first baby boy, they celebrated with a very small group of close family and friends and it was such a joy to be there to photograph it! While they were waiting for their loved ones to arrive (aka braving one of the many winter storms of 2015!), I told them I wanted to blog the elopement portion of their wedding in black and white because of the emotion and the intimacy of their ceremony. They were all for it! How am I so lucky to have such amazing couples?!

Before their ceremony, we stepped outside for just a few minutes to shoot some portraits in the forming winter wonderland! I want to shoot in the snow every single day. It was magical. The world always gets so quiet when it snows, have you noticed? It’s seriously the perfect place for an almost husband and wife to snuggle up together!

Congratulations, Dianna and Jay! Please enjoy a few of my favorites!