After taking a few weeks off of the blog (in order to finish up some important photography work for our clients) we’re back with some new recent Sessions to share with you-! We have Sessions that we’ve photographed as recently as THIS past week, so we’ll go in order. A little over 2 weeks ago in the final days of July 2020 it should have been Chicagoans Bridget & Branden's Basilica wedding and Notre Dame reception on Saturday July 25th (which we've been planning to photograph them at them for the past full year). A few months though in April over a month in to the Pandemic these two wisely chose to push their wedding back a full year to the summer of 2021. Due to this rescheduling we were oddly enough available on this July Summer Saturday to fully mask up in our KN95s to capture baby Elizabeth's Baptism here in South Bend-! Baby Elizabeth’s grandma Lee hired us last second to capture the baptism day since her family came in from New York, Michigan, and more to spots to celebrate her at a small private ceremony-!
The baptism for Elizabeth took place here in South Bend at St. Therese Little Flower Catholic Church. (The last time we were here was actually just a month prior after capturing a wedding day in June because they had a massive annual plant sale-!) The family actually gathered at the beautiful back of the church for the baptism ceremony, though you can see in one of the photos below how beautiful both the front and back of the church are-!
Since as with many of our clients we didn’t know the family prior, we got to know them through the ceremony and also during their outdoor family portraits-! Lee had hired us and is the mother of Angelica (i.e. baby Elizabeth’s grandma)! Lee sat next to parents Angelica & Matt during the ceremony as little “Ellie” was baptized.
The priest for the baptism was actually a family friend of Lee & Angelica’s family. He was wonderful as he guided Ellie’s parents and God Parents through placing oil on Ellie’s head in the sign of the cross at the start of the baptism ceremony. During the baptism he also joked asked some of the other kids (Ellie’s cousins!) some questions about the meaning & symbolism behind what was going on since some were in religion classes and had had their First Communion already!
(Grandma Lee who was herself in from Kalamazoo, Michigan was very attentive to her newest granddaughter during the ceremony as well fanning the napping Ellie during the ceremony which was very sweet).
Soon it was time for the baptism itself-! Parents Matt and Angelica walked baby Ellie over to the altar along with the God Parents. The priest then baptized Ellie (being told only afterward that she hates water on her head which he laughed about).
Ellie was a trooper and soon she was given a new piece of garb signifying her newly baptized self-!
Her God Father literally climbed immense heights to light her baptism candle and her God Mother/ aunt held onto it for her for the end of the ceremony and blessing.
After the blessing we captured a few portraits within the church and then moved back outside so that folks could come in for Confession happening right after.
We of course also captured Family Portraits outside to celebrate Ellie’s baptism and the gathering of their families-! Elizabeth was pretty tired for her whole baptism, so the portraits of her look pretty angelic and serene. We started with portraits of little Ellie and her parents, with they and the priest, and then with her grandma Lee.
We of course made sure to capture photos of Ellie with her parents and both sets of grandparents as well as little Ellie with both sides of her extended family-!
We also made sure to capture some portraits of Angelica and Ellie as well as little baby Ellie with her God Parents-!
After capturing some last portraits of Ellie and her God Parents, then she and just her grandparents, we captured some final photos of Lee and her other children’s families.
We made sure to capture a portrait of Grandma Lee and her 5 grandchildren, Matt with his baby and immediate family, and then Angelica’s 2 siblings with their immediate families (and also some with they and Grandma Lee).
Thank you so much for having us capture Elizabeth’s beautiful Baptism day, Lee! We so enjoyed meeting your family and hope that everyone had safe travels home to their home states. We cannot wait to print your images for you once those are chosen and hope that everyone has had a good couple of weeks since we captured your family-!
_________ Unrelated: Coming up next week we’ll be sharing with you Professional Headshot Portraits that we captured of therapist Samantha-! We captured these in South Bend in the past week and cannot wait to share these wonderful Portraits with you.
Next weekend we’ll be capturing Ashley & Nathan’s big wedding day for 11 hours in Goshen at Meadow Brook Barn-! We’ll be sharing Teasers of that in a couple weeks here on the blog, so stay tuned for that big wedding coming up-!
In other news, we’ve actually had to reschedule some wedding couples for a SECOND time in mere months. Some wedding couples pushed their wedding back 14 months, then 15, some pushed their wedding back from Summer 2020 to Late Fall 2020 and are having misgivings, so they’re pushing back to Summer 2021, and still others are having issues with Notre Dame about the tentative and ever-changing Notre Dame Football plans. Things are very stressful and messy this year, but we’ve been there for our couples EVERY step of the way. We will never forget how much we all depend on one another for things to go smoothly and all we want is for our couples and their loved ones to be HEALTHY, Happy, and SAFE.
2021 will definitely be a REUNION with so many of our couples that we’ll miss seeing for a FULL year as they battle through this Pandemic in different states and adjust their wedding plans again- many of which we’ve been working with for YEARS at this point. We hope that venues remain responsible, but also encourage folks getting married to carry the burden of being responsible with the health of their loved ones. We have our fingers crossed for our Michigan couples since Michigan is months behind Indiana in how many folks they allow to indoor weddings (we’re on the border of Michigan & Indiana and the last we checked Michigan only allowed 10 folks to indoor weddings (vs Indiana having allowed 250 to indoor weddings for a month or 2 so far). Our fall filled up, but is now thinning out again due to the rise again of the Pandemic numbers here in the United States, so 2021 looks to be pretty weird for us. We’re still working on sorting things out, but may actually be able to take more Fall Family and Couple Portrait Sessions this fall 2020 due to this new move of wedding couples rescheduling a 2nd time in mere months (to Summer 2021). If you have any interest in a full Portrait Session, feel free to reach out to us at: info@jennyandjasonphoto.com to get scheduled in our books for a gorgeous fall Session in advance-! (We tend to book weddings a year in advance and Portrait Sessions often 2 to 3 months in advance). Thanks for tuning in and we’ll catch you NEXT week here on the Weekly Wednesday Blog-!