Luke & Ashley’s Grand View Lodge Wedding – “Part One”
Last weekend, Joannie & I had the honor of photographing Luke & Ashley’s absolutely stunning Grand View Lodge wedding in beautiful Nisswa, MN!
The newlyweds!
Ashley is the youngest of three pretty sisters, and I am thrilled that Joannie & I have now photographed the weddings of each of these three sweet girls. That’s really a tremendous honor and privilege to be sure. These guys are like family to us!
If you would like to enjoy some really awesome engagement portraits; check out Luke, Ashley & their Golden Retriever Sadie and their fall engagement portrait session took last October. Very pretty stuff.
Destination Wedding Photographers
Joannie & I love photographing destination weddings, and this is now the 3rd time that we’ve photographed a Grand View Lodge wedding. Just this past January, we photographed Nolan & Amanda’s pretty winter wedding there.
Grand View Lodge is a wonderful setting for just about anything, in addition to wonderful vacation getaways (which Grand View Lodge really excels at), it’s also a really a great place for a destination wedding. In fact, there were three destination weddings held there last Saturday!
Joannie & I arrived on Friday afternoon, and upon sending them a text to let them know we had arrived there safely, we were immediately invited to attended their rehearsal party later that evening on the shores of beautiful Gull Lake. What a nice surprise that was! It was really fun to meet and get to know everyone in advance of the wedding day.
The Girls At Interlachen
Saturday morning arrived and Joannie & I drove over to spend some time with the ladies getting ready at nearby Interlachen, a separate portion of the resort about a mile away on the northeast side of Gull Lake. We had lots of fun photographing all of the happenings, including the very nice image below of the dresses hanging from the log timbers of the pretty A-frame cabin.
The pretty dresses!
The Boys At The 8th Fairway
I also ran over to the 8th Fairway townhouse where the boys were getting ready. I witnessed a wedding first there (for me anyway), Luke wore a bow tie as part of his wardrobe. What’s the big deal about that you say? Well, he actually tied it (with help from some of the boys and YouTube video. NO CLIP-ON! I’ve never seen anyone tie one of those buggers. It took some teamwork, but it looked great once they figured it out!
It was a very sunny day in Nisswa, so we decided to have Ashley’s dad, Steven, and Luke’s first looks outside tucked in the shade at the Gull Lake Center, which is also where the Grand Ballroom is located. That’s where Luke & Ashley’s truly stunning Grand View Lodge wedding reception was to be held later that evening.
Luke shoots his new cell phone cover image!
The First Looks
After Steven & Luke’s first looks, Joannie & I set out to create photos of the wedding party. It was turning out to be a pretty warm and very humid day in Nisswa, so we did everything we could to keep everyone (and the flowers) hydrated and as cool as possible. That included us too!
The ladies!
Because of the very sunny conditions, our new state-of-the-art high powered MoLight lighting system got a real workout on this wedding day! Including a lot of heavy lifting from “Lightning McQueen”, our portable golf cart light stand that I custom built this spring. That cart was a real godsend, because by the end of the day my iPhone told me that I had walked 7.6 miles at Grand View that day, and most of it with full gear and “Lightning” all loaded up!
Da boys.
Be On The Look Out
Before we set out that morning, I did a walk through the resort to find locations that would work for wedding photography in the sunny conditions. One of the locations I fell in love with was an area right in front of Glacial Waters Spa. There are a pretty pond and waterfall there and I knew this was a spot that I had to take advantage of.
I decided that this was a spot that might give us the opportunity to create a “Signature Image” for Luke & Ashley.
Luke & Ashley looking pretty awesome!
Little did I know in the morning was that I would get to create more than one of those very special wedding photographs at this very pretty location. A wedding photography light painting would come later on that night.
Besides these two fun wedding images shown here, there’s another “show stopper” that we created at the pond much later in the day. We’ll share that beautiful wedding photograph in “Part Two” of Luke & Ashley’s Grand View Lodge wedding reception coming in the not too distant future.
Luke & Ashley’s wedding party.
As I mentioned, this is “Part One” of Luke & Ashley’s beautiful Grand View Lodge wedding day, and their highlight music video concludes with many of the family portraits and several B&W candid wedding photos mixed in there for fun.
The parents.
More To Come
“Part Two” will pick up at the start of Luke & Ashley’s very pretty Grand View Lodge wedding ceremony which was held in The Vineyard there. Also included will be lots of fun wedding reception photos (held both inside and outside of the absolutely stunning Grand Ballroom), many fun dance images, and not one, not two, but three more “Signature Images” of our newlyweds! Freakin’ awesome!
Grandpa says hello to the King & Queen!
In the meantime, please enjoy “Part One” of Luke & Ashley’s beautiful Grand View Lodge wedding! –M&J