Gary & Katia’s micro wedding in The Villages was the first time that I also officiated a wedding from behind my camera.

In the running of this business, one of the most important things to me is that, when you look at my body of work, you see true diversity in the couples and families I’ve served. Not tokenism, but a vast pool of faces that anyone can find themselves in.

The recent hit that is The Golden Bachelor has mainstreamed the fact that love in your 70s is as exciting, lively, and joyful as any other while the wedding industry is still highly targeted at young first-marriage couples to the exclusion of everyone else. Every couple, of every age, deserves to have their love celebrated.

The Villages is a famous town known for quite a few things. One of them should be that a lot of people find love there! Gary & Katia are a couple who met in a phase of their life free from the things that can weigh down other couples. I was so happy for them and honored to have been the person to, not only photograph their union, but to have been the person to marry them!

Gary & Katia got married alongside friends who were so very happy for them. They brought a lot more joy to an already joyful occasion and we had a lot of fun together.

I recently became licensed to officiate marriages in Florida and, while my version of this is extremely quick and no-frills, it’s proven to be a popular option. I have many of these weddings on my calendar coming up soon and these two were my first couple! The first lesson I learned was an important tool required to marry people is something we don’t often use these days—a pen! Note to self…buy pens.