Getting Settled in Raleigh, but first, a couple more Knoxville projects

The unpredictable road of life is one my family and I travel with the pedal down to the floor and with several unexpected detours. The last five years has taken us from Raleigh to Tampa to Knoxville and back to Raleigh and included our wedding, our baby boy and several job changes.

Now that we have moved to our new house in Holly Springs two months ago, we plan on doing the old "settling down" that most people in their mid-30s have already started years before. 

But best laid plans, and whatnot.

Meantime, I've enjoyed returning to WRAL for my part-time work shooting/editing high school football stories for Football Friday and producing the Logan Zone. More on all that in a post next week.

Earlier, I finished up a few projects I had already agreed to shoot in Knoxville before we left town.

The most recent one was a wedding I drove back for in early August for Susie and Sebastian Clerge. Here is the highlight video.

The venues for the wedding and the reception were both gorgeous: Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville and the Tellico Village Yacht Club in Loudon, TN. The event was an incredible melting pot of cultures too because Susie's family is Palestinian and Sebastian is Hatian. 

As you can see from the video, we tried something different with the bride and groom reading the letters they had received from each other. It obviously led to some emotional moments for Sebastian. Neither I or the ones reading the letters had seen them before we shot those scenes.

I probably leaned on less video from the actual ceremony in the highlight video than I usually do because—even though the venue was beautiful—the access on where you can shoot an indoor church wedding lessens the variety of shots available. I think it still worked, especially with the cool video of the bride and groom on the boat before the reception!

Three weeks before that, I shot a quinceanera right before we moved to NC. What an experience! I had never been to one before. I suppose the best description of a quinceanera would be that it's like a Latin American bat mitzvah. It's a church service and a party celebrating when a girl turns 15.

The family and the event planner asked that I do mainly raw video for this event so it's a lot longer and not nearly as flashy as the wedding highlight video:

Do yourself a favor and scroll to the 58-minute mark and beyond for some of the choreographed dance numbers to get a feel for how much time (and money) goes into these parties.

As you can probably tell, the ceremony was also held at Sacred Heart Cathedral and the after-party was at The Barn Event Center in Townsend, TN. Cool place!

Special thanks to event planner Esther Johnson for hiring me for both the quinceanera and the wedding! I'll always be willing to travel back to the area to shoot more events like those.