This wedding has been more than a decade in the making for us.
Ben first met Collin at Millie and Mike’s Isla Mujeres wedding in 2008. Then in 2010 we photographed Carlos and Dany’s wedding in Los Roques, Venezuela, where Polly and Collin were guests. They had just started dating, but we saw the magic between them was real.
Polly and Collin first worked together at NBC, as motion-graphics artists. Polly knew the day she met Collin that he was the one. All their co-workers knew it too. But it took a few years of friendship before they finally went for it. We definitely had a moment of celebration when they emailed us to tell us they were engaged! We had been waiting on that news for so long.
A few months later, they came to Charleston for their engagement session (and to see Drivin’ N Cryin’, a band both Erin and Collin grew up on). And a few months after that we were all in Harwich Port, MA, for their Wychmere Beach Club wedding! That weekend a Nor’easter just happened to hit Cape Cod, making national news, and bringing rain and cold and lots of fog. But it only made the weekend more fun and adventurous.
It’s impossible not to be swept up by Collin and Polly’s charisma together, but what we love most about these two is their intellect, their perfectionism, their weirdness, their wit, and the way they can be best friends but still look at each other as if they were on a first date. In their presence, friends are constantly entertained and loved on. Polly and Collin want to make their friends laugh, and they want to surprise them. In lieu of a first dance, they did a first karaoke. The welcome boxes included a “message in a bottle.” The message was a code you could scan with your phone, which lead you to a video of them on the beach welcoming you to their wedding weekend. They also created an interactive multimedia app with maps, stories about each guest and info about the weekend. There were surprises around every corner all weekend, to the utter delight of everyone involved.
While all these surprises were happening, all we could think was, do their friends and family know how lucky they are? Do they realize that all the hard work that was put into this was just to bring a smile to their guests’ faces? It’s really rare you meet a couple who spends so much time thinking of everyone else, and what they can contribute to life to make it more interesting (like their annual hilarious Christmas videos). We had a blast at this wedding, but what we’re more excited about is continuing our friendship with these two wonderful, unique human beings. And yes, we DO know how lucky we are.