Stephanie & Brady's Wedding - Duquesne University Chapel and Marriott City Center - Pittsburgh Wedding Photographer Christina Montemurro

I’m so happy to be sharing a preview of Stephanie and Brady’s wedding photos! These two appeared here last December for their North Shore engagement session, and we’d all been looking forward to their wedding day.

I’m going to continue with the approach I used on my last blog post – here I’ll share some of my favorite photos from various parts of the day, along with a little background information about what exactly it is we wedding photographers do all day and night. Keep in mind if I went into detail about everything, this post would be really long! Stephanie and Brady will have over 700 photos in their final gallery. So consider this a glimpse at some excerpts of what happens throughout the day.

Many thanks to Jorge Santiago for photographing this wedding with me. All the photos of Brady prior to the ceremony are Jorge’s, and some of his are mixed in throughout the rest of the day as well.

I began with Stephanie and her bridesmaids as they got ready in a large conference room at the Marriott City Center. I typically begin with photographing the bride’s details – dress, shoes, jewelry, whatever she would like me to capture. I needed to stand on a chair to be able to hang the dress from a ceiling light. Not a big deal except the only chairs in the room were swivel chairs! Bridesmaids Antonia and Rachel helped to steady the chair while I climbed up.

The next challenge was addressing the lighting in the room. Here’s what the dress looked like with the ambient light.

I knew we could do better than this, so I used a remote flash with a grid to illuminate just the dress, and stood in the doorway to better frame it.

I’m also looking for candid moments while hair and makeup is going on. When Stephanie first contacted me, she said, “I love your silhouettes!” So I knew I’d be looking for silhouettes throughout the day. I love them too!

Loved this moment. I know, it looks like it could be staged, but it’s not. After her hair and makeup was finished, Stephanie walked over to her dress and said hello to it – she couldn’t wait to put it on. Perfect combination of a genuine moment in great light!

There were plenty of buttons for everyone, and plenty of time for me to move around to look for other angles of this endeavor. Loved the reflections in the conference room table.

There’s a lot to love about the Marriott City Center. One of them is the really nice little plaza just outside the hotel. I told Stephanie I knew she’d feel pretty silly lifting her dress high and twirling it around, but that it would be worth it for the silhouette. If she hadn’t lifted it up to shoulder height, it wouldn’t have caught the light so beautifully.

Meanwhile, Jorge was with the guys, who were clearly relaxed – throwing a football around on the Duquesne campus before the ceremony :)

… and when the women got to the little back office in the Duquesne Chapel, they had a little Taylor Swift-inspired song and dance to shake off any nerves. Time for the ceremony. I asked Jorge to go up to the balcony for the processional and love the resulting wide shot of Stephanie and her dad walking down the aisle. But my favorite is coming up really soon…

Next one is my favorite! So much joy between these two finally getting to be together. Just before we began family photos, I caught this moment. So sweet. Of course, we always get the classic family portraits on the altar. Love it when my second shooters capture moments like these twirling flower girls while I’m busy lining up the family formals (there’s me on the far left with Aunt Nancy). Next up, bridal party photos on the Duquesne campus. In late September, the light at this time of day was just lovely! For bridal party photos, first we do the whole group. Then, we split up for group photos of groomsmen and bridesmaids. Sometimes we can do groomsmen and bridesmaid photos before the ceremony. We had done a few of these earlier, but we did not yet have flowers at that point, so most of the bridal party photos were all done here at Duquesne.

A frequently asked question – how long does it take for bridal party photos? For a group this size, not that long. It took about 20 minutes total for all of the bridal party photos.

Since I’d been with the women all morning, Jorge and I switched here, so he photographed the bridesmaids while I went with the groomsmen.

Brady’s request: some old-fashioned, classic, serious photos.

The bridal party was free to go and relax in the limo while we photographed Stephanie & Brady on the beautiful campus. How long does it take for bride and groom photos? We spent about 30 minutes with these two. I was obsessed with this gorgeous bouquet by The Blooming Dahlia. It was super hot and didn’t feel like fall at all, so we were pretty excited to find this tree with leaves starting to turn. Brady really wanted a bridge photo, but the wedding day timeline didn’t allow a trip to the North Shore. We still managed to get the 10th Street Bridge here! And now that silhouette! I was so happy the sky and environment allowed for this to happen. There wasn’t actually a breeze, so Jorge tossed the veil and ran away. I even kinda like the one with him still in the frame :)
On to the reception! I captured some reception details, including my favorite – the cake – while Jorge got a few photos of cocktail hour, and then it was party time!

Love this last one, looks like they’re running away together!
Congratulations, and THANK YOU, Stephanie & Brady. Such a privilege to document this day for you. And for once I remembered to get a photo with the happy couple!