Earlier in the year, I had the pleasure of second-shooting a hill country wedding with Shelly Beck of Shelly Beck Photography. Payton and Eric had their June wedding at the Kendall Point in Boerne. Kendall Plantation is gorgeous Boerne wedding venue and it was an equally gorgeous day!! 

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As second shooter, I covered Eric and his groomsmen pre-wedding and they were a very lively group of men. This group of guys might well have been the funnest group I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I’m not saying this because they were full of fun and jokes. I’m not saying this because they laughed with each other right up until ceremony time. I’m not saying this because one of the groomsmen was a fellow Army man! Hoorah!! I’m not even saying this because I photographed Eric taking a shower. (Disclaimer: The shower walls were frosted and I witnessed absolutely no nudity.) I am saying this because these groomsmen were in great spirits and were there to support Eric 100%. The energy was great!

Hill Country Wedding at Kendall Point

I loved witnessing the moment—just prior to Eric and Payton walking down the aisle to say their vows—that they did a peek-a-round. It’s an intimate moment where they met before the ceremony without actually seeing each other. They exchanged gifts and briefly spoke with each other to get rid of the butterflies and nervousness. Payton had written Eric a love letter and then gifted him with a boudoir photo book of herself. I will just say that Eric was beside himself and couldn’t actually believe that his wife-to-be took those photos.

It was so funny hearing him ask, “Payton, what are these? Oh my god, Payton!! You did this!! Wow!!! This is wonderful!!”

Even though the two shared a private, intimate moment before the ceremony, Eric was still overcome with emotion when he finally saw his bride escorted down the aisle to be given her hand in marriage.

Gentlemen, this is way you have your first kiss! You exert energy, zest, love and lots and lots of excitement!! 

The timeline only allowed for a few minutes for Eric and Payton’s creative session. Personally, I always love it when my clients are willing to expend and allow more time for the creative shots. As wedding photographers, we do have to be able to act fast and think on our feet while moving at 80 m.p.h. However, if these images are important to you, slow down just a bit. Give us a few more minutes to try and be creative. When you only give us 10 or 15 minutes for your creative portraits, that only allows us enough time to get the safe shots. We resolve to just do the “routine” shots and basically, you get what everyone else gets. That’s not enough time to explore and experiment and try anything new. In essence, you’re putting a damper on our creativity and that’s probably exactly why you hired us—for our creativity. 

Here are a couple of other of my favorite shots from the day.

If you’d like to see even more images from this special hill country wedding, please enjoy this video. For the best quality, be sure to change the video player settings to 1080 HD.

The post, Hill Country Wedding at Kendall Plantation, first appeared on Ata-Girl Photography Co.’s website and blog. Please feel free to comment here, or share this post with your friends via Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Please email me if you have any questions about this article or want to share a neat idea for a future blog post with me.