A sneak peek of Christine and Ben's wedding!  More to come this week...

A few posts back, I wrote about how Debra and Brian invited me to New York City to document their engagement session.  Since my hubby and I had never been to NYC and rarely get to take vacations during wedding season, we decided to make a weekend of it.  Normally, when we visit new cities, we try with all our might to avoid looking like tourists, to look like we belong.  But as our giant airport shuttle drove us into the heart of Manhattan, my face pressed expectantly against the tinted window taking in the mass amounts of people, gritty streets, ornate architecture, street festivals, sidewalk vendors, endless, endless, endless buildings forever disappearing into the horizon...I knew that I was going to be one of those open-mouth, looking-up, camera-around-the-neck tourists. Meh, c'est la vie.

We spent three days wandering, eating and sightseeing our way through Little Italy, Soho, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Midtown, Murray Hill, Times Square and Central Park.  I thought I would create a million images.  I thought my camera would be permanently affixed to my face.  But it turns out I was so mesmerized by the city, by the stunning architecture, iconic movie locations, the subway, the sidewalks, the shopping, the people, the heat, the Empire State Building, the food, oh sweet baby Jesus...the food, the heart-wrenching artwork at MoMA, the Brooklyn Bridge, the tops of buildings disappearing into tiny specks in the sky, the sprawling, historic, endlessness of it all...my mind couldn't process it fast enough. 

I was sure that I would be taken by the glamour of the city, you know...bright lights, big city.  But what resonated with me was the sense of personal history, the thought of thousands of hands that touched thousands of bricks, the raising up of buildings, families, careers, hope, and the comforting connectedness of a past that left grounded, physical evidence of it's existence.  I'm certain on my next visit, I'll have some much needed perspective and will create lots more imagery. But for now...this is a tiny handful of what was in my heart that weekend.

OH. MY. GAWD.  Meagan and Rob rock my world.  They ROCK it.  When they first met with me Meagan handed me these freaking awesome film stills from the Marie Antoinette movie and some of the sexiest, most dramatic glam-meets-rock-and-roll style boards EVER.  And then proceeded to describe their wedding theme as, "A Royal Bash Gone Awry".  Um...YES, PLEASE!!  Just a few weeks later, we found ourselves at Jeffrey mansion...doing their most amazing engagement session.  They are madly, crazy in love with each other. And I am in love with them.  Madly.  Forever.  IN LOVE. 

My favorite shots of the day are the window images below.  Right when Meagan and Rob got all nestled into these windows, Meagan got calm and quiet...and said across the way to Rob, "I'm so glad we're doing this. I'm so happy to be here right now...for what this all means."