Elora and Will:
St. Mark’s Methodist and Republic NOLA Wedding
This awesome and fun-loving couple came in from Texas to get married in New Orleans, and their wedding was a total blast! Republic NOLA, a music club in the Warehouse District near downtown, was a great place to photograph a wedding reception. It had lots of character, and I loved the balcony above the dance floor. This was a perfect place to position a couple of remote flashes to light the area. This is the perfect venue for a couple who wants something a little different, with a more “gritty” character to it.
I deliberately made sure to get some very wide angle vertical shots that included the chandelier high above the dance floor, as this was an architectural element of the venue that the bride had previously told me she liked.
Getting Ready, First Look, and Ceremony
But first, we started out with some getting ready shots of the bride at the Hilton Riverside. The groom’s gift of a memory box containing Instax prints of the couple’s life together to date was a big hit! We then headed to an AirBnB that was right across the street from where the ceremony was to take place, St. Mark’s United Methodist Church of the Vieux Carre on Rampart Street. There, on the spacious balcony, the couple shared a first look. This enabled us to get all of the formal group shots done. We also did some fun shots of the wedding party and portraits of the couple.
Bittersweet Confections crafted the gorgeous cake. I loved the classic mural in the background where they placed the cake table. That photograph was captured mostly using just the warm available light of the venue and the candles around the cake. This perfectly captured the mood and ambiance.
The flower ninjas of NOLA Flora did the beautiful flowers, while the expert Bella Productions crew handled the video.
- Planner / Coordinator: Jessica Talazac – Republic NOLA
- Hair / Makeup: Louisiana On Location Brides
- Officiant: Cory Sparks
- Florist: NOLA Flora
- Videographer: Bella Productions
- Reception entertainment: All Out Entertainment – DJ Pat
- Cake: Bittersweet Confections
- Second Line Band: Kinfolk
A Creative Second Line Parade Solution
The couple’s wedding ceremony had taken place at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church of the Vieux Carre on Rampart Street. A second line parade was planned for after the ceremony. But as anyone familiar with the downtown New Orleans area can attest to, marching from St. Mark’s in the French Quarter all the way to Republic NOLA in the Warehouse District would be an awfully long walk!
The bride and groom’s perfect solution to this problem was for the parade to depart at the church and just march down several blocks down Rampart Street. The parade wrapped up in front of Armstrong Park, where several buses waited to transport everyone to the reception venue. Another variation on this solution, sometimes used when the reception is in the French Quarter but the ceremony has taken place elsewhere, is for buses to bring everyone from the ceremony venue to a drop-off point (usually on Canal Street, which is on the edge of the French Quarter), and the group second lines to the reception location from there.
At the conclusion of the second line, the band accompanied the bridal party on a trolley bus to Republic. There, they performed throughout the cocktail hour before the DJ took over the entertainment duties for the remainder of the reception. Then the night was capped off by a sparkler send-off outside on the sidewalk.
The bride had this nice compliment after the wedding:
Our pictures are absolutely beautiful thanks to Michael!! He is the best to work with and truly captures the big day flawlessly. Highly recommend!
