This session was shot by GMP founder and Principal Photographer Elizabeth Millar with videography by Principal Videographer Elijah Halford

Maria and Manny had us for digital photography, film photography, and cinematic videography for their Ancient Spanish Monastery Wedding in Miami

Wow. We walked away from this wedding feeling so incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to do digital photography, film photography, and videography for Maria & Manny’s micro wedding at the Ancient Spanish Monastery in North Miami.

We had 3 hours to shoot establishing shots at the venue, getting ready with bride and groom, ceremony, family photos, and their bridal session.

Maria is an art director with incredible amounts of inspiration, creative direction, and overall vision for exactly what she wanted for their photos and video. The video direction involved lots of inspo pieces and there were two common themes I noticed in those videos: there wasn’t a lot of camera movement. The movement in the films was from the subjects on camera, not the videographer. And, two, there was a charming soundscape bringing in ambient sound from the day like cheering, music, voices.

Maria also wanted the photography to heavily feature the ambiance and architecture of the venue without blurry backgrounds. She wanted everything sharp and in focus and this is going to be a popular trend in the coming years so it was great to be pushed outside of my comfort zone where I shoot with too-wide-apertures. I will absolutely be introducing this more in the future.

Let me tell you a bit about this magical venue in Miami…

The Ancient Spanish Monastery, officially known as the Church of St. Bernard de Clairvaux, stands as a captivating architectural anomaly in North Miami Beach with a history that spans nearly nine centuries and two continents. Originally constructed between 1133 and 1141 AD in Sacramenia, Spain, the monastery served Cistercian monks for nearly 700 years until it was seized during a social revolution in the 1830s and converted into a granary and stable.

In 1925, media tycoon William Randolph Hearst purchased the cloisters and outbuildings, dismantling them stone by stone to be shipped to the United States in over 11,000 wooden crates; however, following a hoof-and-mouth disease scare that forced the burning of the packing hay and a subsequent financial crisis for Hearst, the stones sat in a New York warehouse for 26 years before being reassembled in Florida in the 1950s as “the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history.”

Today, this medieval Romanesque and Gothic structure serves as a premier wedding venue, prized for its “fairytale” atmosphere featuring ancient stone arcades, statues, and over 20 acres of rare gardens that offer a sacred, Old World backdrop for ceremonies and receptions.

Its unique aesthetic has also made it a sought-after location for pop culture productions, most notably serving as the setting for Catherine Zeta-Jones’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” dance number in the film Rock of Ages and appearing in scenes for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. A part of the lore here is that Jennifer Lopez scouted this location as a possible venue for one of her weddings.