The unmistakable pride and love on these faces just fill me up.
Every daughter yearns to make her parents proud. She wants them to approve of her choices, and she wants them to be confident in the knowledge that she is truly happy. Lauren’s parents each had their own way of letting her know how they felt on her wedding day to Jason.
Lauren’s mother, Michelle, barely left her side throughout the getting-ready process. And when it was time to give her away to Jason at the chuppah, she held on to Lauren’s skirt as Lauren’s father hugged Jason. It is my favorite photo from this wedding. I wonder if Michelle even knew she was doing it, or if it was just a subconscious wish to stretch out the moment as long as she could, to literally not let go of her daughter. Either way, I saw the intensity of a mother’s love, and it stopped me in my tracks.
I asked Lauren what her favorite moments were from the wedding day. Without hesitation, she remembers her delight at seeing how well Jason could dance during their first dance. “I had no idea that Jason knew how to dance!” she said. “We’d actually never danced together prior to the wedding, but he pulled out some awesome moves.”
Her second favorite moment was also about Jason, but manifested by her father. During the father-daughter dance, Lauren’s father pulled her close, and “he whispered in my ear that he thought Jason was the greatest, and that every time he spends time with Jason he loves him even more. That made my heart grow about 10 sizes. There was just so much love in the room.”
We met Lauren through her cousins Kim and Liz, sisters (and now very good friends of ours) whose weddings we photographed in 2009 and 2012. You can see Kim and Peter’s Cornell wedding and Liz and Doug’s Four Seasons Palm Beach wedding on our blog.