Wedding at 21 Main Events at North Beach with puppies in place of bouquets!

I met Jenna and Justin at last January’s Wedding Showcase event in Myrtle Beach. We briefly discussed their upcoming wedding on October 2nd, taking place in the courtyard at the 21 Main Events at North Beach wedding venue. January was such a short time ago, however a lot of things have changed since then. I will be at the Wedding Showcase again next year, I’m sure things will be a little bit different with social distancing and masks, but I hope lots of people come and have a good time.

The bride loved some of my previous pictures from 21 Main Events and she was asking if I used a drone for some of the overhead ceremony shots. I explained that there is a balcony in the main restaurant, that overlooks the wedding courtyard. I have a small extra charge if someone wants a second photographer for the wedding. For most smaller weddings this isn’t necessary, but for something like this, when I need to get shots from a balcony location, I recommend it. My wife came as my second shooter for this wedding, so she was able to stay on the balcony during the ceremony and got some great overhead shots of the event. She even got some nice group shots from the balcony, after the ceremony was over.

Puppies for adoption

As the wedding got closer, Jenna let me know they had teamed up with the Humane Society of North Myrtle Beach to bring puppies, available for adoption. My wife and I love dogs so we were very excited about the puppies. The plan was for the bride and bridal party to carry the puppies down the aisle, in place of wedding bouquets. Jenna and Justin did a first look with each other before the ceremony. Since the puppies couldn’t stay too long, this gave me a chance to get some great pictures the bride, groom and wedding party holding and playing with the puppies.

One of the little black puppies seemed to take a liking to me, he was coming over and climbing on my shoe and cried when I had to leave him. I knew it was going to be hard to resist adopting one of the puppies, but we adopted a Labrador puppy a couple of years ago and she is a big crazy dog now. I also have a toy poodle that is about 13 years old now. We just can’t handle another dog, for now at least. But I really hope my pictures will help the Humane Society get some of the puppies adopted.

I love one of the pictures below with the bride holding the white and beige puppy close to her face. This was an extremely cute and calm dog, they said he had already been claimed for adoption. We also took a big risk putting all the puppies on the bride’s dress for a picture, thankfully there were no accidents, and we got a really cute shot.

Sunset at the gazebo and on the beach

After the ceremony, we went down to the gazebo with the wedding party, for some pictures before sunset. As long as no cars or people are in the background, the gazebo, with the palm trees and sunset behind it, is very pretty. There is also a very pretty beach area behind the North Beach Towers, with a marshy inlet area, where water flows out to the ocean. I got some beautiful pictures, with the bride and groom standing in front of the sunset, just as the sun fell below the tree line.

I was working again with Eyecon Entertainment during the reception. He has some indoor sparkler equipment that can shoot up sparks behind the dance floor. I love some of my pictures of Jenna and Justin dancing with the sparklers going off in the background. I also loved some nighttime pictures of them, in the courtyard, with the lights hanging in the background. I setup a flash behind them to give some background separation.

For the large group picture on the dance floor below, it was too wide to capture with the lens I currently had on my camera. So, I did a quick 3 shot panorama of the dance floor. It’s amazing how good Lightroom’s panorama features can be, it seamlessly combined the three pictures even with the movement of the group between each shot.

I hope you enjoy the pictures below. If you are having a wedding at 21 Main Events at North Beach please let me know. I would be happy to give you some tips or to discuss things further.