Willie and Laura
St. Andrew's Cathedral
April 30, 2005

I don't usually do indoor weddings, they are definitely not my favorites. But I can do them if needed. I know there are a handful of brides who are asking themselves...needed. Why would it be a need? Well, to sum it up, 100% of all Catholic weddings must be done in a Church recognize by the Catholic deity. The Catholic rules of marriage, are very very strict. Those who are Catholics, know what I mean. Second weddings are even more difficult as divorce is very much frowned upon in this religion. There are off shoots of the Catholic religion, where the strict rules are little more relaxed. Priest are allowed to get married, but most ceremonies of this nature are pretty much he same, consisting of the same rituals. For any of those who are curious about my beliefs, I myself have no religion, but I am a Christian. Without getting too deep into it, religion or religions are basically man made, and the message of Christ can easily be skimmed or even skipped over, or misinterpreted very very easily. Theologians are great at studying religion, but studying the word of god...They still need help. I saw a Discovery Channel where one theologian actually thought god was some sort of Alien who caught a comet here to teach us how to make sand castles. Now that requires a lot of blind faith, more than the regular bible..haha... I have no denomination, don't belong to any church, but truly believes J.C. died on the cross so sinners like myself would not have to burn in hell. I don't push my beliefs on anyone, and I don't judge anyone. I do though, use my beliefs as my moral compass in governing my life and my business.

Okay, so onto the wedding...finally.

Laura and Willie met with me about a year before their wedding to "test me out." Some couples do this make sure that their dealing with someone sane, most of all to make sure that the quality they were looking for matched what they were dreaming. Wilie and Laura actually booked me for an engagement session, and if I passed their test, I would be booked for their wedding.

Well, lets just say that the engagement session went well, and I ended up shooting both photography and video for their wedding. I'll tell you what's hard about shooting both the engagement session and their ceremony. Basically you, or me in this case, well, I didn't want to recycle the same poses from their engagement session. There were other challenges here as well. Their ceremony location was indoors, and I couldn't use any flash. So I had to use high speed film and I had to open the iris rather wide. This is something you really don't want to do as you really run the risk of getting blury pictures if you're not careful. The other challenges...shooting or using St. Andrews as a backdrop. Needless to say, I thought up of a few cool ideas...got some great shots, and had a lot of fun doing it.

Willie and Laura's ceremony was really cool. It ran a little long, so long I had to change my mini DV tapes in the middle. But there was a hula dance performed by their friend, mass, communion, and the usual ceremonies. After the ceremony, we shot around the property, then headed to Kaka'ako to take pictures. Yes, we headed to one of my favorite locations. I thought we already got beach pictures for their enagement shots, why not get some nice palmtree ocean shots for their wedding.