Summer wedding at the Holliday Cottage in Brookgreen Gardens

I always love going to the Holliday Cottage at Brookgreen Gardens for weddings. The gates, leading to the “Youth Taming the Wild” statue, is such a beautiful location for a wedding ceremony. This Monday afternoon wedding was planned from the beginning to be a small event, with only family and close friends in attendance. This was a second wedding for both the bride and groom so they wanted to keep things simple. They even planned to have the small reception back at thier home in Pawleys Island. All of these original plans worked out perfectly with the current social distancing restrictions.

In fact, we even got to do something special, with the main gardens closing now at 5pm. Charlene, the wedding director at the Holliday Cottage, drove us on a golf cart out into the main area of Brookgreen Gardens for pictures. Normally, when hosting a wedding at the Holliday Cottage, the bride and groom are restricted to pictures around that area. The area around the Cottage is still beautiful, but it’s special being able to go to some spots in the main gardens. If you want to see a more typical wedding at the Holliday Cottage you can check out one from last spring here https://www.ryansmithphotography.com/blog/2019/04/27/spring-wedding-at-the-brookgreen-gardens-holiday-cottage-and-dance-floor-lighting/.

The bride and groom got ready with their adult children inside the Holliday Cottage. I tried to be good and keep my mask on as long as I was inside and around the guests. It is a bit difficult to wear a mask when it’s hot and humid. I’ve got to figure out a way to stop my camera viewfinder from fogging up whenever I’m wearing the mask. I can pull it off my nose but then that kind of defeats the point. I might try some different kinds of masks and see if I can get a better one. It looks like us vendors will be wearing masks at weddings for the foreseeable future. But maybe if we are good and wear them, we can eventually start having big weddings again!

After taking some getting ready pictures with the group, we headed out to the gates for the wedding. It was touching watching the groom’s son walk the bride down the aisle towards the very happy groom. They didn’t have a typical bridal party, but I got some cute pictures of the couple with thier children after the ceremony. The bride and groom were getting pretty tired by the time we got into the main gardens for their pictures. Even though it was overcast, it was still very hot a humid. They were only up for driving to a few spots around the gardens. So, we just did some quick pictures by the “Diana of the Chase Pool”, the “Live Oak Allee”, and finally the “Fountain of the Muses”.

Since it was so overcast that day, we didn’t get the sunlight filtering through the trees like it does sometimes at the Live Oak Allee in Brookgreen Gardens. Even without the sun, it’s still a beautiful background with all the moss hanging from the trees. I made great use of the new Tamron 35mm f1.4, that is such a beautiful lens. I mostly shoot portraits with my 85mm f1.4 Nikon lens. However, I wanted to really give an expansive view of the trees and statues in some of the backgrounds, so I took a number of my shots at 35mm. Actually, some of my favorite shots of the bride and groom at this wedding were shot with the wider 35mm lens. I’m glad I brought both on the golf cart ride into the gardens.

I hope you enjoy the pictures, if you are having a wedding at Brookgreen Gardens please let me know!