Apollo Fields | Water’s Edge Wedding Photos | Centerport Wedding Photographer | Long Island Wedding Photographer

AlexANDRA + BryaN

I never thought of it before, but a wedding is like a home. It is a place to celebrate the people you love with food and drinks, complete with little pieces of yourself scattered about like clues to your soul. Some weddings are sterile like condos with uncomfortably modern furniture, while others are welcoming like old homes with large wooden tables and smooth wooden benches. You know as soon as you walk in, right after you hand your coat to the host or the coat-check, what kind of experience you’re about to embark upon. Well Alexandra and Bryan’s wedding at Water’s Edge in Centerport, New York, was the kind of celebration where you have to wait ‘til the next morning for the candle wax to dry, because no one was blowing out any candles any time soon.

Centerport Wedding Photographer

Shortly after moving into their early 20th century, 1,200 square-foot house in Centerport in 2017, Alexandra and Bryan started becoming obsessed with local history. They became increasingly involved with the Greenlawn - Centerport Historical Association and knew that they would want to keep their celebration as local as possible. Enter Water’s Edge, the historic Thatched Cottage seated on the edge of Mill Pond with a brand new lease on life. It was the perfect place to celebrate their love and it was just a stone’s throw away from their front door.

Water’s Edge Wedding Photos

When you walk into the foyer of Water’s Edge, the clean white marble and large spiral staircase harkens back to the glam ballrooms of the Gatsby era. The decor is modern yet timeless, and the various spaces allow for customization to your heart’s content. Alexandra seized this opportunity to celebrate her love of F. Scott Fitzgerald and imprinted the beautiful blank slate with impressions of her home on every table and in every corner. Vintage books with beautiful blue bindings beneath every dried floral centerpiece, a one-of-a-kind dreamy moon-themed photobooth, and matchbox and candle wedding favors that were both cute and functional. There were no design pages left unturned.

Personal Wedding Vows

Coming from a writer who couldn’t quite get the right words for his own wedding vows, I couldn’t advocate more for speaking about your love at the altar. Just like everything else in life, it’s less about what you say, and more about how you say it. Bryan decided to use Alexandra’s name as an acronym and to use every letter to symbolize something meaningful about their relationship. Alexandra decided to quote a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald depicting the responsiblities of marriage. In my experience as a wedding photographer, your wedding day is a sort of dress rehearsal for the rest of your relationship, and when things inevitably go wrong, how do you handle it? Well when the brakes of the special-ordered vintage car smoked and caught on fire, Alexandra and Bryan rolled (literally) with the punches and embraced the change rather than fought against it. Something tells me that these two will be loving each other for a long, long time.

Inviting Us into Your Home

When we said our goodbyes to Alexandra and Bryan at the end of their wedding, it was like embracing guests at the end of a dinner party. You want the candles to keep burning, the cocktails to keep stirring, and the laughs to keep going. That is what is undoubtedly the best and most rewarding thing about our jobs as wedding photographers. To develop relationships with people like Alexandra and Bryan who would rather build a longer table than a higher fence. In a home and a life like the one they’re building, it’s no surprise that their benches are smooth with the company they keep.

Vendors

Photography: Apollo Fields
Venue: Water’s Edge
Flowers: Hydrangea Home
Photobooth: PicPerf Photobooth, Jenn and Laurie, 917-301-4974
Cake: Dortoni's
Music: Absolute DJs
Guestbook: FeteFone
Wedding band (Alexandra): Erstwhile (created by Erstwhile)
Engagement ring: Erstwhile (vintage)
Wedding band (Brian): Rustic & Main (whiskey barrel, mahogany, rose gold in lay)
Suit: Men’s Warehouse
Dress: from BHLDN FiDi in Manhattan, shoes from BHLDN website (Rachel Simpson)
Transportation: MV Limosines
Invitations & Menus from Paige & Co (UK) - Moon & Stars suite
Make up - Erica Heras
Hair - Danielle Cosmo