JX&JY: The Wedding

The photos from our wedding day are the work of the incredible, inimitable Reuben Castro, of Reuben Castro Photography in Orange County, CA. When Jane and I first started putting together our wedding plans a year ago, Reuben was one of the very first people we got in touch with, because I was so enamoured with the work on his website. His simple style of portraiture, with ample attention to color, composition, and natural scenery, was a perfect fit for the pile of selfies that Jane and I had cobbled together over 9 years of dating. Eventually, we sealed the deal with Reuben even before we really finalized the date, time, and place of our wedding. We met with him only once before the big day; around Christmas, we brought him to our old high school, and walked around campus as class was letting out before winter break. Reuben listened attentively to our musings about teenage love, about nerdy afternoons spent studying together after school. For someone whose portfolio is bursting with golden light and plant life and desert landscapes, Reuben never once complained that we were asking him to shoot us in a concrete schoolyard at the height of the mid-May sun.  He nodded dutifully as we showed him the location of our old lockers and toured him around the dim, fluorescent-lamp science building where we used to hang out. "This is really cool, guys," he said with a big, reassuring grin. "This is totally gonna work."

Flash forward half a year, and I can't speak highly enough about Reuben and his assistant and the level of work that they brought to our wedding day.  For Jane and I, who are used to cameras but not used to posing, being adorable, or certainly looking any good in our photos, Reuben was wonderful to work with. He managed to make us feel relaxed, at ease, and happy during a very heart-fluttery few hours of our lives, and our wedding simply wouldn't have been the same without him. This post, which contains the prettiest portraits of me and Jane anywhere on this site, are a testament to that fact. Jane and I will be forever grateful that we had Reuben Castro and his cameras to document our wedding day.

The photos here were taken on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, May 20th, 2017, in Orange County, California.
They were taken at our alma mater, Troy High School in Fullerton, and at the Hacienda Restaurant in Santa Ana, where Jane and I were married with friends and family in attendance.

Thank you to Miguel Garcia of Miguel Garcia Studios for filming for us on our wedding day!

Music:
"To Good Friends / On the Other Side" - Laura Shigihara and Yasunori Mitsuda

Mountains: Big Bear Lake

Amidst a rare visit to California for wedding details, Jane and I took her mom on a two-night trip up to Big Bear Lake. The weather was beautiful throughout those days, and we spent them walking through the pine woods on the north shore of the lake, and climbing up to the PCT along the Cougar Crest Trail (Jane's mom all but outclassed us on the mountainside), savoring the panoramic views of the lake below us and of Old Greyback, towering into the clouds beyond Snow Summit. After a late afternoon browsing the shops in Big Bear Village, deserted and quiet in the lull prior to the holiday-ski season, we retired to our two-bedroom lodge on Lagonita Point. Jane started the rice cooker while I walked down to the lake shore to photograph the sunset. That night, we sat around the table enjoying homemade hot pot, and kept the fireplace going late into the evening.