Caboto Centre
Stephanie & Drew's Wedding

Getting Ready

Stephanie got ready at home. Not a hotel suite, not a rented venue — her actual home, and it tells you everything about her aesthetic. Brick fireplace. Velvet armchairs. Religious figurines on the shelves. Lace curtains filtering the morning light. Garden bouquets — colorful, abundant, and completely unrestrained — crowding every table and windowsill. The space looked like a room that had been loved into looking exactly the way it does, over years. It was the perfect place to begin a wedding day.

The floral embroidered veil was the detail of the morning. And the moment her mother placed it — straightening it, adjusting it, stepping back — is the kind of quiet exchange between two people that a camera almost feels like it shouldn't be present for, and then you look at the image and you're grateful it was. Stephanie's lace off-shoulder gown, embroidered with flowers from hem to bodice, was extraordinary on its own. With the veil on, in that room, surrounded by all of that — it was something else entirely.

The Groom

Drew got ready separately, in navy. A three-piece suit, navy bow tie, white boutonniere — understated in exactly the right way. The letter reading is always one of the images I look forward to most in a wedding gallery. There's something about a man sitting quietly with a piece of paper that his partner wrote him — reading it, being alone with it for a moment before everything becomes public — that produces a very particular kind of image. Drew's did not disappoint.

The First Look

At 12:53 PM — hours before the Caboto Centre ceremony — Stephanie and Drew stood in the backyard garden and read their handwritten vows to each other. No guests. No officiant. Just the two of them, surrounded by lush green trees, a small patch of private sky overhead, and a moment that belonged entirely to them.

This is the one I keep coming back to. They had already said it — the real version, the handwritten version, the one with the specific details that only they would know to include. The ceremony at the Piazza at 4:00 PM was for everyone else. This one was for them. By the time I watched Drew's face as he read from the paper in his hands, I already knew what kind of day this was going to be.

Portraits

From the garden we moved through the backyard for couple portraits in the afternoon light. June in Winnipeg means the sun is high and bright well into the early evening, which gives you real options for where you position people. We worked in the shade of the trees, in the open patches of grass, and in the full sun — which is where the white umbrella came in.

That umbrella shot. Stephanie in her embroidered gown, Drew in his navy suit, both of them under a white umbrella in clean golden afternoon light, surrounded by green. It's one of those images where the styling does half the work and the light does the other half and you just have to be in the right place. I was.

The Ceremony

The ceremony began at 4:18 PM in the Caboto Centre's outdoor Piazza. A wooden arbor wrapped in white draped fabric. Chiavari chairs for guests arranged in rows on either side of the aisle, which was lined with lush garden florals — colourful and abundant, exactly like the bouquets from Stephanie's morning at home. The brick building rose behind everything, and the Edison string lights overhead were waiting for evening to do their best work. At 4:18 PM, in the June afternoon, they were still a quiet promise of what was coming.

Stephanie walked down the aisle and Drew watched her come. He had already read her words in the backyard that morning, but seeing her in that dress, in that veil, walking toward him in front of everyone — that's a different thing entirely. That's the version that makes the eyes go before the brain catches up. Which is exactly what happened.

They had already said it to each other in private. The ceremony was saying it to everyone else — and their community, gathered in the Piazza, was ready to receive it. The vows, the rings, the kiss. The whole Piazza moved through it together.

Family Formals

Family formals moved to the Caboto Centre patio — which, with its established gardens and brick architecture, offers a backdrop that doesn't compete with the people standing in front of it. The multi-generational quality of the gathering was evident immediately. Italian-Canadian family celebrations have a particular warmth and organized chaos that's a pleasure to photograph — everyone has an opinion on where they should stand, and somehow it all resolves itself within a few frames.

There's a grandparent in almost every wedding's family formals who makes the whole block of images. This day was no different. The image exists. They will love it.

The Reception

The Mauro Hall opened and the first dance began at 6:04 PM. I photographed it in black and white. Under the draped fabric ceiling with fairy lights threaded through — the soft overhead glow, the couple alone on the floor while everything else waited — it called for monochrome. Some moments are already doing so much that removing colour is the only way to let them breathe. That first dance frame is the one.

Dinner followed. Speeches. Toasts. The particular warmth of a reception room that contains people who have been waiting all day to celebrate two people they love — that energy is unmistakable, and the Mauro Hall held it well. The room is built for evenings like this one.

The Dance Floor

The father-daughter dance came first. Then the floor opened. In June in Winnipeg, the sun doesn't set until nearly 9:30 PM, which means the dance floor at 8:00 PM is happening in a building while outside — just beyond the doors — Manitoba summer light is still doing something extraordinary.

At 8:54 PM we slipped out. Stephanie still in her gown, her veil set aside by then but the embroidered dress carrying everything it needed to. Drew in his navy suit. The white umbrella again, in garden light that had gone from afternoon gold to something richer and lower and longer. The reception was fully in motion inside. Nobody missed us for fifteen minutes. And the images from those fifteen minutes are the ones that will end up on the wall.