A great day that started in McFarland and ended at El Tango Reception Hall in Bakersfield. El Tango is one of the bigger reception halls in town capable of holding more than 200 people. The entire C&B team got in on the action today. Bryan started at the groom’s house with one of the video team and Chris started with the bride and another video team. Capturing memories for a 10 hour wedding is always tough, but we love making sure our brides and grooms have a great experience.
Jacqueline’s dress looked amazing and we did a few shots of it on the armoire in the bedroom. This was also a great place to captures some detail shots of her blue/green shoes and earrings. The light was tough to work with, but we made it happen. After she got in her dress, we did some more shots and got some B-roll for the video, we then headed to the church.
The church was St Elizabeth Catholic located at 835 E Perkins Ave, McFarland, CA 93250. Even though the entire service was in Spanish, we have worked so many Catholic weddings that we had a pretty good idea of what was happening. The hard part about shooting in a church like this is the low light conditions. Most priests will not allow flash photography and we usually find that so many amateur photographers are causing the churches to place more restrictions on all photography.
Once the ceremony was completed, we headed to Riverwalk Park in Bakersfield. We did several bridal party photos at the park before heading to the reception venue, El Tango. The photo at the top of the post is one of the several shots we did at the park. The below shot was taken in the garden area at El Tango. The outdoor area has a small fountain and a grassy area. While the hall can accommodate a couple hundred people, the outdoor area which is sometimes used for ceremonies, can only seat 30-40 realistically. It is nice that there are several trees and bushes to provide shade, but the cramped quarters makes it hard to get shots like this without a wide angle lens. Bryan brought his new flashes which we employed to get this stunning shot.
When we had arrived at the hall, Bryan started working on a same day slideshow for the couple. Chris asked the management if we could use the projection screen and was told it would be $250 and the bride would have to pay for it. Obviously we aren’t going to make the bride pay so that we can show her and her guests photos from the wedding day, so we set up a monitor on the sweets table and looped the video for guests to look at as they chose. It is unfortunate that we couldn’t use the screens for a couple of minutes to surprise the bride. Oh well, dinner was really good! Once the dancing started and guests were closer to the sweets table, more of them stopped to watch the short slideshow we did. It was nice to watch their reactions to our work. While we have very independent personalities, we also kind of crave acceptance, at least of our work. 😉
We would love to hear your feedback in the comments on what you think of either of these photos. We will link to a few more of their photos soon.
