Real Couples // Carmel-by-the-Sea: Jess + Karolyn

Real Couples // Carmel-by-the-Sea: Jess + Karolyn

This wedding between two incredibly talented Irish photographers on a cliff in Carmel was fairly unplanned in that they were married the day before they intended, in a city they didn’t plan, on a cliff they hadn’t seen before, but in the end it was perfect. Their home in Northern Ireland is the only place in the UK and Ireland that doesn’t have marriage equality, so they’d been planning their Big Sur ceremony so they could get married somewhere beautiful—to finally have a piece of paper that said they married. But the week of their ceremony, the storms had been brewing in Big Sur and didn’t seem like they weren’t letting up. Warnings of weakened bridges to Big Sur, the intended wedding destination, and pictures of washed away cliffs filled my inbox as I drove from the airport to Carmel-by-the-Sea. Karolyn and Jess realized that I was there an extra day, the one day it was expected to not rain, so they decided Carmel would be the place they would get married. They were married with the sun shining down on them, hands clasped together, over the rushing sounds of waves, while greenery was hanging off cliffs for as far as the eye could see. And this is the story of how they were  finally married. 

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