Shawnee and Matt, Michigan Beach Wedding

Sometimes, as a photographer, you get to be a part of something truly awesome. Shawnee contacted me about a week before her wedding, which was going to be on a Tuesday. They were doing what I have now names the backwards elopement. You see, her and Matt had been engaged for a while and living in Florida. They had been talking about a beach wedding in Florida, but instead, decided to keep things simple. Instead of planning a big shin dig in Florida, they decided get married on the trip they had scheduled back home. Shawnee called her dad, a minister in Port Sanilac, and asked him what he was doing the following Tuesday. When he said nothing, she asked him to marry her and Matt on the beach she had swam at as a little girl. And thus, the backwards elopement, where one travels to home to throw a low key event, was born.

Myself included, there were 9 people at this wedding (if you don’t count the mother and her three children who were at the small beach in Port Sanilac that evening). As someone who is currently planning their own wedding, I’m pretty jealous of how simple and relaxed everything was for Shawnee and Matt. I only hope my wedding is half as stress free as this one.

I absolutely loved being able to document this incredible intimate and relaxed beach wedding, and had a great time breaking bed with their families later that night at the Pilot House on the Saint Clair River. Enjoy.