New Orleans Wedding | "Look at You, Baby!" - Celeste & Michael

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/59886923[/vimeo]

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers meeting.
-from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"

While many will choose to untie their lives with a destination wedding, sometimes, there's just nothing like coming home...literally.

As Celeste gathered with her bridesmaids at her house for some pre-ceremony champaign, Celeste's father, the only other man in the room, eased on over to me and pointed out that many of those in the wedding party knew Celeste since their first days of school at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, wherein the chapel, Celeste would be married 2 hours later.

After the rehearsal the night before, Celeste related to me how she had attended weekly chapel services in that very room for 13 years.  As the semesters ticked away, while her friends moved into different classrooms and wings of the campus, they would always come back to this one edifice, week after week.  Only her childhood home was a place of more consistent refuge.

Upon graduation, many of Celeste's friends went their separate ways. Celeste ventured to the University of Virginia, then to the LSU school of Law, then back to New Orleans to further her career.

Michael, from Lake Charles, followed a similar trajectory.  After attending the University of Virginia, he made stops in Dallas and Birmingham before the pull of home led him to settle in New Orleans.  Home is where the heart is!

With "home" being another character in their story, it was only fitting that the arc of the wedding day run through the locations that embody that sense of place.  From Celeste getting into her dress upstairs at her parents house, to walking down the aisle at the chapel in the academy, to taking her first dance with Michael in the backyard of her childhood home, there was a rooted-ness in family history throughout the day's events that few couples experience.

Celeste and Michael, thanks for inviting us to come home with you.  I trust that this clip from your wedding video will continue to bring you back there, time and time again.

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Photographer: Elizabeth Dondis Dress: Vera Wang, from Mimi Ceremony: Academy of the Sacred Heart Reception Entertainment: Sauce Band (from Austin!) Makeup: Tisa from Tisa's Beauty Bar Event Planning and Flora: Ted Viator, The Gardenaire Catering: Audubon Tea Room