Category: Couples

Amy+Ben in New York City

Amy and Ben are awesome! We already knew this, but it was further solidified upon staying with them for a week in Brooklyn. :) We photographed their engagement session at Duke University and their wedding in Raleigh and now we’ve photographed their anniversary session near their home in Brooklyn, New York. :) They were living in New York City when we first Skyped with them about their wedding but then all of the subsequent photos involving them were taken in North Carolina were Amy was raised, so we thought it would be pretty rad to finally have some pictures of them taken where they’ve been living for so long. :) Since we were in Buffalo and Rochester for the previous weddings, shoots and visiting Geoff’s family, we were able to Megabus it from Rochester to NYC for $50 so it was a win-win for all involved. And they were so ridiculously gracious to allow us to stay with them in their apartment for a week while we ran around the city and spoiled their cats (who, it turns out, really enjoy balls made out of tin foil).

Their neighborhood is amazing and quiet. We were walking back from the subway at 1:30am one morning and we just saw a few people our age walking about and one elderly woman who was asking her dog which way he thought they should walk down the street. We were able to get everywhere… including the little great grocery store that had a lot of yummy gluten free things! And there was a place called the Farmacy that was basically a soda fountain and we both had our first NYC egg cremes! And some really nice woman in the subway gave me her water when I was about to pass out from heat stroke (it was really, really, really hot while we were there… even for people who live in the south)! We had an awesome time and want to thank Amy and Ben for being the BEST EVER!!

P.S. If you want to see our other New York adventures (including Geoff visiting the Ghostbusters fire house and us actually drinking the egg cremes), visit our Instagram page!

We’re not going to ruin all of our fun and interesting facts about Ellie and Geoff and how/why they brought us to New York to photograph their engagement session and wedding (hint: it involves winning them over with roller skating in our parents’ basements, Ace of Base, beards, two mothers strongly believing that the British spelling of Jeff is better, some robots, and RIT). We’ll save that for their wedding blog (coming up next!). For now – you’ll have to deal with the pictures of the two of them romping around Griffis Sculpture Park during their engagement session in Springville, New York… which is kind of Buffalo, New York… which is kind of upstate New York but not really… it’s more kind of the middle of a field in the southwestern-ish part of the state. There were giant parrot-spider creatures and crabs and snakes and Geoff warned us that there would be amazon women in the woods and we didn’t believe him, but there were.

C’est (pronounced “say” for you non-French speakers) is my best friend from high school. Her real name is Laurie, but I only call her that when I’m trying to let everyone else know who I’m talking about. We knew each other vaguely through her being in a musical with my sister, but we officially met in French class where we discovered the term c’est (“it is”) and began introducing ourselves as such after we realized that we were a good match with my pants made out of city skyline fabric that I wore every day and Laurie with her Beastie Boys shirts. Eventually we got sick of adding our names after c’est and just shortened it to c’est. We both call each other that, and our French teacher told us that that’s not really how it works, but we kinda don’t care. The name stuck through all of high school and the forever beyond, and I’ve now delightfully tacked it on to the end of her New Zealand husband’s name (you’re welcome, Neil!) because that’s how marriage works.

C’est and Neilc’est met in England, but Neilc’est is really from New Zealand: land of no small mammals but lots of birds. C’est moved from Pittsburgh to England to go to school and Neilc’est moved from New Zealand to England for work and they met there through mutual friends. They then decided, “Hey, let’s go to Scotland!”, so they did. They lived there for a while, presumably living off of scones and meatpies and swimming around lochs. They recently moved back to Pittsburgh and got married in an anarchist bookstore that hosts weddings sometimes. We were sadly unable to attend as we had a client in NC that day, so we took ’em out for pictures in Mellon Park when we were in Pittsburgh last to get some pictures of them being married and running around. C’est used to go to Mellon Park when she was little. We made her stand behind Neil a lot act like his arms… because that’s how mature we are.