Svetla and Teddy in Chicago

Sometimes an email lands in my inbox that blows my mind. The email I received from Svetla and Teddy was one of them. “Hi, I love your work! And I want to inquire if you would travel as far as Chicago, USA?”. That’s right. I’m in Ireland and they wanted me. I can’t tell you how insanely good that makes you feel. Okay I can – it makes you feel insanely good. Until of course you look at your calendar and you realise you’re not available. At which point insanely good becomes insanely disappointed! However – I floated the following idea. “I’m coming to Chicago in May – How about I meet up with you guys and we hang out and I take some photos of you and we’ll just have a really good time doing it?”.
Five months later, Dee and I are travelling on a bus across Chicago to Teddy’s ridiculously cool music store. I’m sure on that journey I probably said “this is mad, isn’t it Dee?” about 20 times. But really, it was weird and I did have to pinch myself that I was going to meet two people who found my work on the other side of the ocean and liked it so much they wanted me to shoot their wedding. As I type it now it still feels weird. Weird but brilliant.
So – Teddy and Svetla turned out to be the coolest couple and not only cool but super warm, generous and just downright lovely. That first night, after quizzing Teddy about everything to do with his music store we then went out for a really short little photo session just around the alleys near his store. We then jumped into a car and these guys took us to their favourite Italian restaurant for a night of great conversation over delicious food and wine which they insisted upon paying for. We ended the night with – “we need to meet again – this cannot be a once off!”. So, the next day we did and this time we met them in Lincoln Park with their son Ivan who is utterly adorable and had Teddy and Svetla not been careful Dee would have taken home with her. We hung out, watched and laughed as Ivan found a stick and I’m pretty sure thought it was the best thing ever and I photographed two people very much in love. It was super. And it’s great to have two new friends on the other side of the pond.
So – family shoots. It looks like I do them now.