Ocean Bride – Ulysses Photography May 8, 2007

Contributed by Ulysses Photography

Ulysses and I had a bride named Lauren last summer who told us right from the start that she saw the photos on our website of a bride in the ocean in her wedding gown, and she wanted to do the same. We hit a snag, however, when she was told by the reception venue that she couldn’t go down to the beach after her reception because there was going to be another wedding after hers. Lauren was so disappointed. However, there was NO way we were going to give it up that easily. I told her she had been planning this for a year, sent her some photos of another bride in the ocean we had taken just the week before, and told her we would do whatever it took to help her get those shots. We came up with a plan to sneak out of the reception 15 minutes early, put them in our car, and head for the beach down the road.

So we got in the car, and we all just started laughing. They said, “We feel like we’re doing something illegal.” It was fun right from the start. We got to the beach and took some amazing photos.

As we were concluding our session, along came another bride and groom with their two photographers and videographer. As the other bride passed us she looked in total shock at Lauren and Justin (who were soaked from the waist down) and said something like “I’m not doing that.” It hit home for us why we were so thankful to have with us an incredible couple like Lauren and Justin because of their adventurous spirit and desire to do something completely different.

While walking back up the beach to leave, we passed a man with a WaveRunner and tubes. He asked Lauren and Justin if they wanted to do some tubing. They asked if we would mind, and we said, “Go!!” They jumped back into the water and onto the tubes. He took them for quite a ride, and they obviously had a blast. Ulysses and I stood on the shore taking pictures the whole time. There was a huge crowd watching, and people kept saying to us “You should submit these to a magazine”… and “We see brides here all the time, but we’ve never seen anything like this!”, etc. When Lauren and Justin got back to the beach, their faces were beaming, and so were ours!

We returned to the venue, but we couldn’t find any of the parents’ cars in the parking lot. Justin therefore had to go back into the venue to see if any of his wedding party was still there. He walked inside, barefoot, still soaking wet, in his undershirt and tuxedo pants. The three of us in the car could NOT stop laughing. I mean, he had to walk back into this high-end venue on the North shore of Long Island, with the other wedding (the same bride we’d seen earlier on the beach) already in progress. He came back out pretty quickly, as there was no one there that he knew. Apparently, they had been unintentionally stranded. So we drove a bit down the driveway and parked near a field of grass. They called their family to pick them up, but it was going to take about ½ hour for them to come back.

Well, here we had a wet bride and groom and a patch of grass. What could we do? We weren’t going to leave them alone, so we figured we might as well take some more pictures!! Ulysses got out of the car with a huge smile on his face. We told them to get down in the grass, and Lauren jokingly said “but I might get my dress dirty.”

We got some more great pictures, and finally the family showed up. As Ulysses and I drove off, we were literally shouting out the window. It was the perfect day – such a total high. We LOVE what we do!!! And we love adventurous brides and grooms like Lauren and Justin.