Elopement Session with J+B
Downtown Norfolk, Virginia
Locations: Norfolk Courthouse, Selden Market, Slover Library, USS Wisconsin
When you’re planning a wedding in June, but that’s just too far away! Jennifer and Berge knew they wanted to elope, and have a big celebration with their family and friends, too. J+B were looking for photographers on The Knot for their wedding reception this summer. After sending us a message explaining that they planned to elope in a few weeks and just need photography for their reception, Ashley and I had an idea.
Let me back up…in January Ashley and I wanted to test our offerings and see if there was significant interest in designing a Wedding Collection that offers an engagement session as well as wedding coverage altogether.
Our new offering, the Limited Collection, provided a 2-hour engagement session, which we also knew would be just the right amount of time to capture an intimate elopement...Now, fast forward, J+B let us know they're eloping, but we didn’t know when or if they even wanted to take photos on the day of their wedding ceremony at the Norfolk Courthouse.
We let J+B know that we would be happy to substitute the engagement session to photograph their elopement and still provide 10 hours of coverage for their wedding reception, and I’m so glad that we did! J+B weren’t planning on taking photos for their elopement, and it would have been a shame not to preserve the beautiful memories of their true wedding day!
In case you're planning to elope at the downtown Norfolk Courthouse, it opens at 8 am and you just have to show up and get in line to get married, there’s no appointment system. J+B certainly didn’t want to wait in line all day, so we planned for a sunrise photo shoot on the Elizabeth River waterfront.
And of course, as is usually our luck, the forecast showed horrible weather. We went back to the drawing board, landed on Selden Market and Slover Library as our indoor locations, and ordered these adorable bubble umbrellas from Target for the outdoor photos.
We are so thrilled with how this elopement session turned out! Berge is actually a huge bookworm, so the Slover Library worked out perfectly. When it looks like he is legitimately reading, that’s because he is! J+B are a casual and relaxed couple, and we loved watching them interact in their own little world while we snuck around bookcases with our cameras.
We should send an apology letter to the Library staff that had to fix the books we moved so we could stick our cameras inside the shelving units…but we promise it was necessary!!
Our final stop was USS Wisconsin because J+B met in the Navy! Call it cheesy, call it what you want, but this was the perfect ending location for our session, giving a call back to where it all started! Another great call back for their relationship, Berge gave Jennifer a ring pop as a joke just before his proposal, so it was only fitting to recreate the moment!
We’re so happy to wish these newlyweds bliss in their new married life together, and we can’t wait for the big reception this summer!
Explore the full Session gallery!
The Limited Collection J+B booked was only available from January to March 1, 2023, as our testing period. We discovered that many of our couples opted for this Collection because it provided more hours of wedding coverage and an engagement session at a fair price. We are happy to report that we’ve updated our Wedding Collections based on what we learned in this trial period!