Real Weddings, Advice, & Inspiration

Catalyst Wedding Company highlights weddings by and for game-changers. We seek to amplify and empower voices and viewpoints that are usually missing from the Wedding Industrial Complex. We're a community of badass wedding professionals who love all things funky, fresh, diverse, unique, and personality-driven; we convene twice yearly for (un)convention, a collaborative workshop, styled shoot, and dinner party. We're also the publishers of Catalyst Wedding Mag, a resource for couples looking for inspiration and affirmation that doing things differently in wedding-world is not only ok, it's wonderful!

We’ve known each other since high school without ever officially meeting. Life took us in different directions, although we both knew about each other from mutual friends. In university, we both took a Psychology of Sexuality course and truly met there.

From then on, we felt an unexplainable bond. There were no walls, no awkwardness, and no filters with each other. Life continued to take us in contrasting directions, but random, synchronous events kept us running into each other again and again. Neither of us had ever been with another woman before, but a combination of the psychology course and our individual journeys made that into a gorgeous reality.

Ked is my rock, but she is also dangerously mischievous, a balance which offsets my anxiety and intense imagination. We just work, and we stopped questioning it when we lost all control to whatever pulled us together.

For this shoot, we had all planned to hike a mountain and get a perfect sunset shoot, but the island weather had different plans for us, and the heavy, lingering rain pushed us to choose Cameron Lake. Taryn thought it would be a gorgeous, gloomy location. It turned out to really represent the island: there was fog, darkness, and so much vibrancy in the forests surrounding the lake. It’s almost prehistoric, and it’s different. We like that.

Words by Camilla, as told to Amber Marlow
Photographs by Taryn Pickard of Innocent Thunder Photography
Flowers by Vertgen Farms

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada camilla and ked kiss by foggy lake, mountains in the distance

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada couple's feet on rock in shallows of lake

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada piggyback ride in lake shallows

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada couple holding hands walking on pebbly beach toward lake

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada camilla and ked standing on rock in lake with whisps of fog passing

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada camilla and ked on rock, both having arms open for embrace

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada candid of couple laughing shot from behind on lake shore, tree-covered mountains in background

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada kiss on forehead

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada bouquet resting on driftwood with wave rolling in from lake

Cameron Lake Photo Session BC Canada couple walking in shallow water holding hands

TARYN PICKARD

I am all about telling honest and beautiful stories of love—whether that's love between two people, families, or the love that permeates nature and animals just through their existence. I love to capture that love and show people their natural and honest beauty.