Yuka & Rafael got married at Town Manor in Auburndale, Florida. You can tell the venue is made specifically for weddings. In this post, I’ll share some of the photos I took for them there. I’ll also give my personal opinion of the venue, both the pros and the cons.
It’s a pleasure for me to shoot photos for people during special events, and these two were no exception. They were such a pleasure to work with. I am forever grateful for every single client that I encounter like this. What makes it even better is I got to work with my spouse in the process because she shot most of their video. I was the photographer, of course.
Unfortunately, Yuka & Rafael’s wedding was postponed a few times due to the pandemic. They were supposed to get married in 2020. But they ended up getting married on September 19, 2022.
As much as I dislike sharing my least favorite photo first, I had to show an establishing shot of the front of the venue. I took this photo real quick and meant to come back later to get another. The picture doesn’t do this place justice. It’s a beautiful venue. Meet the bride, Yuka! She was very nice and sweet the whole time. They were giving each other bracelets so I made sure to capture a photo of it for them.I had to get a photo of all of them with their bracelets.Attention to detail is important on a wedding day. You never know the story behind some of the accessories they use. But often times their accessories are very meaningful. This photo is one of my favorites! It took me a few times shooting their wedding rings with different backgrounds and props. I had a bridesmaid hold a light for me, and voila! Picture perfect, like magic. Here’s the obligatory shot of Yuka’s wedding dress. I wanted to take a photo of the dress with a little more creativity in it. Like this one with them in the mirror!Going with the creative mirror photo theme, I captured this one with them looking into the mirror at Town Manor. I had the bride’s sister hold the ring like this and used a shallow depth of field to make her face out of focus. I love the shot! What do you think?Some of Yuka’s family wore Japanese attire. Pretty cool!Classy. What do you think?Personally, I’m not much of a flower person. But as a wedding photographer I shoot some beautiful flowers!Once they were all ready, I took a lap around the venue before the ceremony started and found this sign set up. One of the most important wedding photos to capture is the bride walking down the aisle. The aisle here at Town Manor is pretty nice. The brick pavement goes through greenery to the ceremony site. This ceremony site is beautiful to the eye, but is hard to capture in a photo due to the incredibly bright sun back-lighting the photo. The kiss! This is another “money shot” in wedding photography. After the ceremony, we took some photos out on the dock. I used a strobe light and softbox to light this scene to “overpower the sun.” That way the color of the sky and detail in the clouds can be seen. It makes a huge difference!Sometimes I capture one of my favorite photos when I’m not supposed to be shooting. I caught this moment out of the corner of my eye and then turned over and captured this shot real quick. I love how this background looks fake! I took a bunch of these photos and liked many of them. It was just so beautiful! I had to narrow it down to just one for this post, or it could get to be overwhelming. But I delivered several variations of this shot to them. This is a great cake cutting photo! They both have natural smiles. I prefer to facilitate a natural shoot for most of the wedding day, instead of making them take fake photos that take them out of the moment. That’s the icing on the cake! The mirror reflecting another angle of the cake and their faces is the cherry on top.Check out the bouquet of flowers in mid-air! We went outside just for the bouquet toss because there’s not anywhere inside that’s appropriate in size. It’s not a huge deal but it is kind of a hassle getting everyone to go outside for this short moment. Plus, the mosquitos were very bad outside at night time. You can’t see them in the photo, but it was shockingly bad in the video. This is their dance area. It looks nice, but it’s kind of small and is separate from the dining room and everything else. I’m not a fan of that aspect of the layout, but as long as there aren’t a lot of people wanting to dance it’s not too bad. In a larger room with both the dance floor and dining room, guests can remain seated at their tables while watching the others dance. That is not the case with Town Manor.After our short dancing session, the bride and groom were ready to be sent off with their bubble exit. The bride and groom were then picked up in this old classic car and then were driven off to live happily ever after.
