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!

Mamta and Hirsha's wedding at the Camelback Lodge in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania was this past December and all of us had our fingers crossed for snow! We had a backup plan, of course — wander into the snow machines for the slopes. But the weather was on our side and we didn’t just get snow — we got a snow STORM! Though the weather said “just a dusting,” while Mamta was still getting ready, it started snowing heavily! It stayed that way through their first look! They were so excited for snow photos that they stayed out for more than 45 minutes for portraits. (Mamta in those open toed shoes!) Hirsha’s family had a blast arriving in style — and in the snow! With the mountains as our backdrop, they had a beautiful and emotional ceremony filled with family.

How to diversify portfolios is a topic that comes up frequently in photography groups on Facebook. It generally looks something like this: “I want to start photographing gay weddings but don’t have any gay clients… what do I do?” or “I need make my portfolio less white/straight… should I do a model call?” A few of those conversations have resulted in white people getting called out for tokenizing members of marginalized communities and, frequently, those who were called out responded with mild (or not so mild) outrage and wondered how to get away from their straight white client base if they can’t do model calls for LGBTQ2S+ folks or POC to expand their portfolios.

There is very limited information regarding tokenism as it pertains to fine arts generally and photography portfolio building specifically. This article is an attempt to compile the information I did find and present it in a way that is applicable to the photography industry. It might seem straightforward and obvious to some, but I think it is needed