Mark and Kaitlyn

Life can be a silly thing sometimes. When I moved to Dallas in 2021, I knew that I would be shooting weddings. It’s what brought me to Texas in the first place, after all. What I couldn’t have known was that a mere six months later, I would find myself enamored with a video game and the community surrounding it. Super Smash Bros. Melee was released on the Nintendo Gamecube in 2001 and 20 years later, I would find myself at my first local tournament for it. As I began going to locals regularly, I would meet the other regular attendees and begin forming friendships both in and outside of those events. Eventually, Mark, or capnsquishy as I know him, would be one of those people. We never hung out or anything, but he was always a nice face to see when walking into FX Games and Console Repair in Plano, TX on Monday nights for their Melee tournaments. Fast forward to 2023; one night the topic of his recent engagement came up and me, being the enterprising woman that I am, I asked if he had any plans or arrangements for engagement photos to which he told me that the two of them were commissioning art from one of their friends for their invites, but that engagement photos might be on the table later.

Later comes around and we schedule a shoot together at The Lumen Room in Dallas. It was super fun, not only because each new shoot presents its own challenges to solve and work through, but also getting to meet Kaitlyn and know Mark outside of the context of a shared hobby!

Now onto the wedding!

Mark and Kaitlyn’s wedding had a beautiful cherry blossom theme to coordinate with their upcoming honeymoon trip to Japan

It was a bit chilly and windy so we did our getting ready photos and solo portraits inside! I usually try to find a spot outside to do portraits or group photos and lucky I was able to for the groom’s side of the wedding party, but for the bride’s crew we opted to do them indoors with off-camera flash.

I’m sure that I can wax poetic about this wedding all day, but at risk of writing too much and stressing myself out over it, I’m going to share some of my favorite images from the rest of the day and let you see it for yourself!

To close, I’d just like to say how grateful that I am for Kaitlyn and Mark to trust me with something so special. To think that I was only there, with them, because of a 20+ year old video game is very very silly, but a blessing nonetheless.