Wedding Stories: Last Night as a Single Mom

The thing that draws me in about weddings most, is that I get to be a first hand witness to an infinite number of stories about love. Weddings aren’t just about romantic love, and the couple aren’t the only ones affected by the wedding. I see mothers and fathers get verklempt seeing their children grown and off to start families of their own. I see grandparents shine with pride and excitement. I see children of parents sometimes feel apprehensive, shy, nervous, excited and full of joy. I see brothers and sisters rejoice for their siblings. I see old and new friends celebrate the fact that love is out there and it’s real. I even see other vendors – officiants, waitstaff, DJs, planners etc get emotional at weddings – I think at the core of every human is this hope that love will live on – I love seeing all of these different stories about love at a wedding. I like seeing how people are affected by love in different ways.

In January I documented a particularly beautiful story about love. When Airika and Doug decided to get married it meant that Airika would be leaving her job and home in Vancouver, and moving up to Smithers BC.  She had previously lived in Smithers with her daughter near Doug, but work and life had put some distance between them. When I had my last meeting with Airika she got a little emotional and told me that her heart felt tender thinking about the fact that the night before her wedding was also going to be her last night as a single mom. She talked about some of her struggles as a single mom, and how it had just been her and Isla for a long time, how she was happy to be joining families with Doug, but that in some way it also felt a bit sad that that era was ending in her life, that it would never be just the two of them again.

Oh man, that really got me right in the heart strings. So I made arrangements to come out and shoot Airika’s last night as a single mom. I won’t say anymore about it. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Thanks for stopping by our blog! We are Brad and Kendra Coupland. We are a couple of award winning Vancouver wedding photographers who travel across Canada documenting weddings and love stories from coast to coast. We have also shot destination weddings around the globe, and our photographic travels have taken us France, to Indonesia, to Cuba, to Barbados and all across North America. We have been ranked as two of the Top Twenty Wedding Photographers in Canada by the Professional Wedding Photographers of Canada, have won awards from the prestigious Fearless Photographers Association, ISPWP, and we have been the recipient of the Couple’s Choice Award from Wedding Wire a whopping 5 times, and recently were a two time finalist at the 2015 BC Wedding Awards.

We are now booking for 2017, but still have a limited amount of space available for 2016 weddings. If you’d like to learn more about our services and products don’t be shy to inquire. You can reach us by clicking the contact button above, or emailing us at info[at]lovetreephotography.ca. We look forward to hearing from you!