Jonathan Williamson & Lauren Riley Wedding

I've been very lucky to photograph some brides who belonged as much on a runway as they did in a church and Lauren Riley is no exception. Her strapless, form-fitting dress was breath-taking, as I'm sure you can see. She and her new husband Jonathan were a lot of fun to work with. The wedding was simple and eloquent inside the Grandview Assembly of God Church in Elk City.
The job of the wedding photographer, in part, is to observe. To know the right moment to snap a shot, but also to be in key with who is comfortable with who. Often at these weddings I can feel tension between family members, including in-laws. However, this was not the case at the Williamson/Riley Wedding. It was heart-warming to me how naturally these two families have come to love each other.
And this is really important because in August Jonathan will be deployed to Iraq. While I normally pick some decoration or song to blog about specifically, on this occasion, I want to write about the heart-warming moment when Jonathan danced with his mother Jo. Jo has been a friend of my mother's for a long time, so I know how she has centered her life around her sons. Jonathan is the baby.
Watching the two of them arm and arm, the mother staring up her adult baby boy bound for war, I wondered how I would hold myself together in this place. Regardless of your opinion about this war, I can tell you this was one of the most poignant, poetic moments of my life. Mothers have been sending their children into harm's way for causes greater than themselves since the beginning of time. I could see their mutual love, the mother and son. And from that, I could tell he will also be a devoted husband. Honestly, I just felt like I was in a very sentimental movie.