Backyard Wedding in Seattle
On a late June afternoon, Yilin and Sean's backyard slowly filled: proud parents, children threading between conversations, friends folding into hugs and picking up where they'd left off. More than one language mingled in the air, musician friends played in the shade of the garden, and the house buzzed with the sweet chaos of getting ready.
Like so many couples planning a wedding in the middle of ordinary life, Yilin and Sean had a lot to carry. And yet they moved through the day with such tenderness, lingering in hugs, reading every card placed in their hands, giving each moment their whole attention.
As the ceremony space was being transformed into an inviting setting for dinner and dancing, the three of us slipped away for a few quiet portraits. Bees wandered over the blooming lavender, and the two of them were so plainly in love that all I had to do was follow their eyes back to each other.
Some of my favorite documentary photographs still come from this wedding. Looking back through them now, what I hold onto most is simply having been there for the whole of it: the anticipation, the joy, the surprises, and the small exchanges that made the day theirs and no one else's. By the time the evening wound down, the summer heat had left me completely soaked through. But I knew I hadn't missed a thing.
