We had this week's blog slated to be a Seven Year Anniversary flashback blog post for Joanna & Kyle's wedding back on September 11th, 2010 in Southern Ohio, but we just spent 4 nights and 5 days in Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio to celebrate our friends Amber & Walter's wedding!! We decided that this week we wanted to share their wedding and our long weekend's worth of photos to take a break from wedding flashbacks (since we just had 3 weeks in a row of flashbacks to 6 and 7 year wedding anniversaries)!
We'll first start with Amber & Walter: These two have been together for nearly 10 years-! They met back in college at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio and the two have been together in their band MojoFlo since at least 2008. The band was home to many of my (Jenny) friends since I lived in Columbus after college from 2009 to 2012, but I've especially remained friends with Amber, Walter, & George with Amber being one of my favorite gal pals in Ohio! Amber even (again) played music for a Halloween bash for a member of the show Glee back in Los Angeles in 2013 and since I was in California for my Master's in Fine Art Photography, we were even able to meet up and have a sort of girl's night at the hotel catching up and laughing! (Fast Forward two years to 2015 and the two then got engaged!) These two are the sweetest, most genuine & laid back people to be around... and extremely talented to boot! (Not to brag, but Columbus is one of the BEST music cities in the United States in my opinion and their funk band MojoFlo is consistently rated the top band in Columbus-!) Amber and Walter even play music together in a duo (going by AW Duo) as well with Amber singing and Walter on saxophone. Personally although seeing them play music is something I've done hundreds of times, I just love hanging out with the two of them eating, having a drink, and relaxing. They're just so warm, welcoming, and real that it's always a treat to be able to visit with them and hang out even though we're all generally busy working on our photo and music businesses on weekends and such. (Fun fact: They're among the top reasons I decided to take work and knowledge from my 8 years of photography classes and start photographing professionally 8 years ago-!)
Anywho, backstory aside their wedding this past Friday September 8th was lovely! It was literally picture perfect and also very warm and welcoming. Amber and Walter decided to have their wedding at the beautiful Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio just about an hour South of the state capital/ their home of Columbus. Their wedding took place outside in a cave in front of a waterfall at the gorgeous Ash Cave. Our friend George (a friend who with his wife Carrie we've gotten to see yearly for the past 3 years) playing his guitar the entire time lead the entire wedding party, attendees, etc all down the path at the park to the wedding spot itself at the cave/ falls. It was one of the coolest, most intimate entrances! Two other musicians also started playing to kick the wedding itself off and the music reverberated perfectly under the overhang of the cave. When it came time to do their vows, Amber randomly decided to sing one of her original MojoFlo songs about Walter which truly said it all and was the most gorgeous sounding vows we've ever heard. Walter followed it up beautifully with his vows saying that hearing Amber singing was what initially drew him to her as he snuck in to hear her sing once in an auditorium.
After the ceremony we all visited for a bit and then headed to the reception hall nearby. The reception hall was tucked away in the hills and upon arrival was full of grilled vegetables, appetizers, and a lot of delicious foods and drinks! We sat with our friends as Walter and Amber had their first dance and Walter then greeted and thanked us all for coming. It was an amazingly friendly atmosphere and we visited with some friends I hadn't seen in 5 years since I moved out of Ohio and other friends who I'd seen within the past few months!
There were meats grilling outside and when it came time, we all headed out and devoured the delicious meats, collard greens, etc. and had a few of the special MojoFlo beers that Sideswipe Brewing released earlier this year aptly named "Hoppy Amber" (the bottle even has Amber pictured on the front doing her arial dancing at one of their concerts). We then danced the night away with everyone to some of the best jams while laughing and having a blast! A HUGE congratulations Amber and Walter on a beautiful wedding day, marriage, and a lifetime more of bliss! We hope to visit with you two whenever we're back visiting Columbus or whenever you're in Chicago! (And our guest beds are open for you whenever!)
The rest of our visit to Hocking Hills was no less dreamy. On our way there we stopped at the Ohio Caverns to see one of the top 3 caverns in the United States. I'd seen it 5 years ago, but this time was even better since we randomly had a private tour! Next we did our traditional *every road trip* visit to Trader Joe's to grab dinner to cook later (we have our top 4 favorite items) and headed off to spend our first night/ a celebration of my 31st birthday in a cabin in Hocking Hills! One of our favorite shows had a marathon on for 24 hours, so in between enjoying our private cabin hot tub and eating we enjoyed relaxing on a couch with a few beers.
The next morning we showered and got dressed and ready for the wedding, then headed over to our campground for some tent camping. Our campground at Top 'O the Caves had a trail right out of it to Ash Cave (where the wedding took place), so we hiked the 20 minute walk to check out the waterfall in the morning, then went back to set up our tent, hammocks, etc. at our campground before the wedding. After the wedding we snuck back to our tent at night and spend the next couple days grilling and boiling our meals while enjoying the emptiness of the campground, the woods surrounding us, and the actual bathrooms and showers next to us! (The campground even had a pool and was merely $20 a night-! Hence us extending our trip a bit.)
While there for the next couple days we were able to finally unwind a bit during our hectic photography during Wedding Season and also visit Ash Cave, Old Man's Cave, Conkle's Hollow, and Cedar Falls amongst other nature amidst the hills, waterfalls, cliffs, etc. We loved using my extremely extensive amount of camping gear that I've somehow accumulated during adulthood and we've decided that we really need to camp more than once every couple years since we love nature, animals, and getting creative with our non-cooler camp meals! (We have a plethora of suggestions for anyone who needs them).
Luckily we get to spend more time in nature for work coming up! We'll be photographing the awesome wedding of Tasha & Josh outside in a few days at the ever awesome Amish Acres on Saturday and then next weekend we get to photograph Sara & Nick at their outdoor wedding down in Monticello, Indiana at a castle on a the lake there-!! We'll even be cabin camping down there for the couple days we'll be there for the wedding, so all-in-all we're extremely happy and excited about this beautiful outdoor wedding month of September! (And no less excited about photographing the upcoming October weddings ending with then getting to attend a friend's wedding in November-!) We hope you're able to get out there and enjoy nature this month and throughout the fall season! <3