A ballroom that seats a real guest list, grounds outside for the portraits, and rooms upstairs so nobody is driving between the morning and the ceremony. We photographed Joyce and Laurent there.
Hotel ballrooms are dim by design and the colour comes from the linens, which at this one means a deep blue across the whole room. Photographed badly that turns skin blue and the night looks like somebody else wedding. We light for the faces first and let the room be the colour it is.
The dance floor is the part of the night people ask for most, and it is the part that goes wrong in a dark room. We shoot it with flash we have set, not the one on top of the camera.
The trees on the grounds turn in September and October, which is when a good share of Edmonton weddings happen, and it means the portraits do not need a drive to a park to look like anything. Twenty minutes outside is usually all it takes.
In January it means the same thing in reverse. You are never more than a door from being warm again, which is what makes winter portraits actually possible rather than a brave idea.