Simone & Victor's Wedding Celebration Dinner | Crown Prince Fine Dining and Banquet | Toronto
When Victor first wrote me, the email subject said, “photographer needed for dinner event”.
So I didn’t know this would be about a wedding celebration until I read the email itself.
He said he and Simone had been married in Australia the previous year, 2021, but because they both had Canadian family that hadn’t been able to celebrate with them (pandemic and all)…. they wanted to travel to Toronto and throw a little wedding dinner celebration together.
And of course, have a few photos.
From the very first email, I knew this would be a super sweet and special event, but also very low stress. Why? Because Victor himself said so:
“We're pretty relaxed about the night, it's just a dinner with a couple of speeches and about 60 guests. We are looking for someone to capture photos of the guests and any significant moments of the night.”
And I mean… yeah? That’s TOTALLY doable.
Add to that the fact that some dear friends of mine from Toronto (who I hadn’t seen during the pandemic at all) were going to be there, as they were family of the bride…
It was really a no brainer.
(to all Toronto couples looking for a wedding photographer: for events three hours or longer, I don’t charge travel fees, because I love road trips, particularly to Toronto and GTA region.)
Alright, so when the day came, I headed over with plenty of time to spare.
I had time to park on a little industrial side street close to the venue, upload a few stories, and take a selfie.
Quick selfie before I photographed this wedding celebration in North York. When I travel to Toronto, I always make sure to arrive with lots of time to spare, because traffic around the GTA and particularly on the 401 can be brutal.
The venue was the Crown Prince Fine Dining and Banquet, in North York.
When I first walked in, I was stunned at how opulent it is. The main room where the event took place had rich red wallpaper and large crystal chandeliers, gilded corniced ceilings, and crimson-red chair covers.
As you can see, I was mesmerised by these details. The original album spreads I included for the couple had a lot of these detail type shots. We narrowed them down together for their final album design.
In no time after I got there, guests started arriving, greeting each other, hugging.
There were lots of cute little kiddos that I took photographs of, doing cute little kiddo things.
Then everyone sat down for a multi-course meal. This is such an awesome thing about Chinese celebrations - the food seemingly never stops!
In between courses, people continue to laugh together, and reminisce.
We also made some time to take a few group photos as well. These were important to the couple and their families, and we always will make sure to capture everything that’s important.
Many of these folks hadn’t seen each other through the pandemic, so it was a super great chance for everyone to catch up.
I went around the tables, looking for splendid and candid moments. And some cute camera-aware ones, too!
When you’re taking documentary photographs, it’s easy to just take *A* photo.
But not every photo has a moment in it.
Even eight years after becoming a professional documentary (candid) photographer, I’m still getting better at catching true moments.
When you stack all the micro-moments against each other, usually there is one which is the ‘peak’. Catching the peak is not always easy. But that’s what I’m doing most of the time while walking around. Oh, and I’m also usually grinning big, so that every guest feels at ease. I never want people to feel uncomfortable with me.
Anyway, after a few courses, the couple got up to give a quick speech, during which time I tried to take photographs from multiple angles, so that you can see some images of just the couple, and others that show the captive audience as well, and their reactions.
Think of it a bit like a movie: you typically see a scene from multiple vantage points, so that you get a more complete idea of what is going on. It’s the same thing with candid photography, be it at a wedding or other event.
There was one cute thing that I really tried hard to capture - it was when this little girl started playing with her grandma’s hair. So this scene - I took seemingly a bajillion years to tell this story.
You see, this little girl was playing with her grandmother's hair for quite a while, and all the while, they were both creating a MILLION amazing moments between the two of them.
Like... to a photographer, this is basically like a wellspring of gold.
Imagine what you'd do if you were walking down a forest path, and suddenly you saw GOLD spring up from the ground.
Pure gold, and it kept shooting up and you frantically tried to capture a bit of it.
This is what it feels like to be a documentary photographer of people.
The raw emotions and pure joyful moments of connection happen CONSTANTLY.
You must be ready to catch them, but then when they happen, you can always capture a slightly BETTER one, a micro-second later... because human emotions are constantly flowing and changing.
So, anyway, it was a beautiful celebration in every way. There were so many smiling faces, so much love and joy in the room.
Photographing these types of events for me is really restorative. What I mean by that is… some weddings are loud and boisterous, and there’s a lot of running around from venue to venue.
Sometimes there’s a long shot-list, or my own personal ideas going into the event of what are ‘must-haves’ that I can’t miss.
But for this one - for Simone and Victor’s wedding dinner celebration in North York, I knew they simply wanted ‘a few’ photos of their dear family whom they hadn’t seen in years. And with a simple wish like that, it gives me so much time and mental space to compose shots, to seek moments… not to rush.
Sitting at a table with my friends, Tash and Shel was a blast!
And I got to see my friends! I shared a table with them and we had a great time (though admittedly, I was jumping up and down off my seat frequently to take photos for most of the night. But don’t worry, we made up for it when they visited us on the farm a few weeks later)
I left that evening, feeling simply thrilled.
