Christina and Nick first met when they were in elementary school. While I’m sure Nick rebuffed all of Christina’s advances at that tender age of five, I’m also pretty sure Christina’s forgiven him by now :). Their little romance took a hiatus of oh, about twenty years or so, and the rest was pretty much history. As a wink-and-nod to their young, innocent beginnings, Nick actually proposed to Christina in one of those classrooms – part of the benefits of still living across the street from the school. While being able to access the building twice (once for the proposal, and once for pictures with yours truly) has a difficulty level of 9/10, I’m sure trying to convince your long time girlfriend to visit your old elementary school without seeming fishy has a difficulty level of 10/10 :).
We had originally wanted to shoot somewhere else after we were done at the school, but we were unable to secure the location. Fortunately for us, that same building manager also managed a few other historic locations in/around the city. After a few quick phone calls and and handful of late-night emails, I had preliminary scouting photos done by the end of the week. Once Nick and Christina saw them, “giddy” is probably the best word to describe their reaction. Shoooot, “giddy” would probably accurately describe my reaction too!
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We had the whole place to ourselves, four stories of wrought iron, hardwood floors, exposed brick walls and windows galore!
And did I mention the ceiling? GOOD LAWD! Look at that gorgeous ceiling!
One of the downsides with shooting inside a 100-year old building is that there’s no air conditioning. Couple that with 100-degree weather, and we got ourselves a sweaty mess of flesh trying to get all romantic-al and having pictures taken. Not ideal :). But one of the upsides with shooting in Williamsburg is that there’s a bar on just about every street corner :) :). Our five-minute break turned up being a 30 minute location change (and a much-welcomed opportunity to cool off!).
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And it only took us 10 minutes to figure out we were playing it wrong :).
Congrats again to Nick and Christina on your impending nuptials! You guys were awesome and we can’t wait to see you guys again next year. We want to thank my building-manager friend for helping us find this gorgeous space, and The Whiskey Brooklyn for just being plain awesome :).
By the time you read this, I will likely be rolling around in some underbrush in Central NJ somewhere. But stay tuned folks. We’ve got a cavalcade of wedding posts coming right up!
Yee-haw!
Ben & Karis
