As I keep making my mark on Columbus as a professional wedding photographer, I'm still saying yes to just about every session that comes my way. This one was a backyard wedding on a late-spring day, with Columbus, Ohio drying out from a strong thunderstorm the night before.
While I was hunting for the right property, I rolled up to what looked like an empty house. As I got closer, I spotted a man in a three-piece suit and a hat standing in the driveway, and someone off in the distance on a riding lawn mower.
The groom had his phone tucked up at his vest shoulder playing music, and he looked — let's say tense.
"Wedding today?"
A nod.
I walked up to the storm door and got a look inside. The house was a wreck, and there was a painting of an older woman with three cats presiding over the whole scene. The woman who answered the door wasn't the bride. It was her twin sister.
Since the bride wasn't around yet, I wandered to the back and met the nicest guy there, riding the lawn mower. He had real Marilyn Munster energy: the one warm, normal face in a household that felt off-kilter. I ended up helping the kids set out tables and chairs and dry everything off from the storm.
Then it was almost ceremony time.
The officiant asked the couple to come stand in front of her. The groom loudly refused — "We're standing here. You come stand in front of us." She calmly explained that they needed to be plainly visible to the witnesses they'd invited. He lost that one. So he walked over to the bride-and-groom table, tore a leg clean off one of the chairs, and hurled it into the woods. "Like a tomahawk," in his words.
When they offered the officiant a plate afterward, she politely declined and headed out. Internally, I was begging: please don't leave me alone here.
Cake time. The bride picked up a big knife and waved him over. He put his hand over hers — and right as they went to cut, he pulled the knife away, ran it through the cake himself, and then pushed her face into it. Not the playful little tap. An actual push.
While she wiped the frosting out of her eyes, she looked at him and announced, "You're a turd."
And that's when two things hit me.
The first: whoever I marry someday, I hope they look at me the way she looked at him in that moment. I don't know a soul — my own mother included — who'd sit through a day like that and still be grinning at the end of it. There's a devotion there I'm not going to pretend to understand.
The second: I'm done photographing weddings at people's houses.
A backyard wedding sounds charming on paper, and sometimes it is. But there's no venue coordinator, no neutral ground, no day-of backup plan — and when something goes sideways, the photographer can quietly become the furniture mover, the umbrella holder, and the only sober witness in the yard. I'll take a real venue with a coordinator any day now.
If you're getting married in Columbus and you want a wedding photographer who'll keep their cool no matter what the day throws at us, I'd love to talk. You can reach out and check availability here.