Sarah and Leo were married at the Midtown Loft.
Leo and Sarah are so incredibly romantic. Seeing them together is really witnessing a couple that have found the love of their lives. The deep admiration they held for eachother was obvious in every glance they shared. My second shooter, Lauren, and I fell in love with them and we could not stop talking about how much fun it was to shoot them.
Leo is Brazilian, so it was a great festive atmosphere, filled with Brazilian music and his family flew in.
Sarah read the vows in Portuguese and her brother led the ceremony. They literally “tied the knot” in their special intimate ceremony
when Sarah’s brother tied string around both of their hands. Leo and Sarah, who had traveled all over the world, did a marvelous job of united friends from different places and different periods in their lives in one room and their collective energy and love was very powerful.
Here is a sneak peak of the a few photos as I edit their wedding. Their charming story of how they met also follows below.
And, here is their story:
“Leo and I had both been traveling solo during 2007. We both started in Australia where we dove the Great Barrier Reef. I was there in February 2007 and he was there in March. Of all the dive boats in Cairns Australia, it turns out we were on the same boat, but one month apart. That was the closest we came to meeting. We were also both in the Himalayas, but I was in the foothills in Northern India and he hiked right into the mountains in Nepal.
By March of 2008, I had returned to the states, gotten a job, then an apartment and was unpacking my apartment one weekend when my yoga instructor, Linda, invited me to have dinner with her, her husband, their baby and their friend Leo at their house. The unpacking was going slowly and so with a car full of boxes I headed over to her house. Leo was late. When he came in, I was sitting on the floor playing with the baby. He came in and while I was struck by how handsome he is, he was wearing jeans that were too big for him and these huge red shoes that stood out. Neither of us had realized that it was a setup, until we saw each other. There was an awkward moment when I reached my hand up from the floor to shake his and said “I’m Sarah.” He stared at me and rubbed his hands together and said, “oh, okay, I see.” And Linda’s husband, Steve, said, “nice shoes, Leo.” I sat there for what seemed like an eternity with my hand out until he finally shook it. I think we were both digesting the fact that we had been setup.
As the evening proceeded, we sat at the dinner table and Linda and Steve found excuses to leave the table with their baby. Whenever they left the table, Steve would initiate a topic — “talk about the scariest part of your trip!” he would shout as he headed upstairs ostensibly to check on something for the baby. After dinner, we moved to the living room where we showed each other pictures from our trip. I had learned that no one ever wants to see more than a handful of pictures of someone else’s trip, no matter how long it is, and so had printed a few representative shots. Leo had simply brought his whole computer which he couldn’t get to work well. Most of the evening was spent with Leo and Steve bickering over the computer not working well, but eventually we did get to Leo’s many many photographs.
As it got late, Leo and I said our good byes. Leo left first. When I left, he was waiting for me in the driveway. I stopped to talk to him, but he wasn’t saying much and I felt awkward so I thrust my hand out and said that it was nice to meet him. He shook my hand and said likewise and I hurried to my car.
As I drove away, I could hear his car behind me. He has a sportscar with a really loud engine. I have a clunky station-wagon that was full of boxes so I couldn’t see in my rear-view very well. His car was making me nervous. As we drove up the street, I was so uncomforable that I went through a red light and then made a wrong turn away from the highway, giving Leo the impression that I was trying to get away from him and hide as fast as I could.
The next morning, Leo and Steve met for coffee and Steve asked how it went. Leo said that he liked me but that I had run away from him. Steve said that he just thought I was hard to read and that Leo should ask me out.
I liked Leo and knew that I had thrown him a little by hurrying away when we were outside the house. The day after we met, a friend of mine emailed me that he was too sick to go to a concert for which we had tickets the next day and asked if he thought I could find someone to take his ticket. I emailed Leo and invited him…and then waited impatiently at my desk feeling that I had put myself out on a limb with this invitation.
As I sweated it, Leo and Steve finished their coffees and Leo headed back to his house to find that I had emailed him an invitation. He was so excited that he replied without putting any text in the body of the email. When I saw the reply, I was so excited, but when I opened it there was no text. I anguished for a while over what that could possibly mean, when, about 15 minutes later, an exuberant reply came saying that he would love to go to a concert with me.
And, the rest is history…”
by admin