Waterfront Wedding at Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club, Long Beach Island

Alex and Mike on the water's edge at sunset with Golden hour fading into blue sea

Alex and Mike have always belonged to the water. When we first met for their engagement session on the Asbury Park jetty, they told me about how they'd both grown up loving the beach, how the ocean was woven into the fabric of their relationship. Alex's mother had orchestrated their first meeting - inviting Mike to a family dinner without mentioning Alex would be there - and sparks flew immediately. They were both beach people, both drawn to the water, both rooted in this particular stretch of New Jersey coastline. So when it came time to plan their wedding, there was never any question about the kind of place they wanted. It had to be on the water. View their complete engagement gallery here.

Every detail thoughtfully considered - butterfly china, sea-green linens, and touches of whimsy throughout

Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club on Long Beach Island was the perfect answer. The venue sits right on the bay, with docks stretching out into the water and boats passing by throughout the day. Alex and Mike worked with planner Sarah Mastriano of A Lovely Universe to create what Sarah later called "not your average tristate area wedding" - every design detail was carefully considered, from the sea-green linens that matched the color of the bay to the pearl-dotted veil that echoed the texture of the water itself. The tent was positioned so that every table had a view of the water. Boats drifted past during dinner. The whole celebration felt like it was floating between land and sea.

That first look joy - the moment Alex and Mike saw each other on their wedding day

I understood their attachment to this place immediately. I grew up spending summers in Ocean City, just down the coast. My grandmother bought a beach house for our family when I was young, and the Jersey Shore became woven into the fabric of my childhood. There's a particular kind of belonging that comes from having a beach town that's yours - not the one you visit once on vacation, but the one where you know which ice cream shop opens earliest, where the best breakfast is, which stretch of beach is less crowded. Alex and Mike had that with Long Beach Island, the same way I had it with Ocean City. We spoke the same language of boardwalks and salt air and the way the ocean looks different every single day.

The tent on the bay - where land meets water and every table has an ocean view

Their wedding took place at the end of September, when summer crowds have thinned but the weather is still warm and the light turns golden earlier in the afternoon. We started the day with a first look on the yacht club docks, the bay stretching endlessly behind them. The joy on their faces when they saw each other was immediate and unguarded - all the camera-shyness Alex had worried about during the engagement session had evaporated completely. Before the ceremony, they shared private vows on the deck overlooking the water, just the two of them, an intimate moment before the public celebration began.

Sharing vows privately by the water before walking down the aisle.

The ceremony itself was brief - less than five minutes - but the emotion was palpable. They'd already said everything they needed to say to each other privately. This was the public declaration, the gathering of everyone they loved, the formal beginning of their marriage surrounded by family and friends under a tent with the bay as witness. Daybreak Flowers created arrangements that felt organic and slightly wild, and the butterfly-patterned china added an unexpected whimsy to the sea-green tablescape. The menu was inspired by their favorite NYC restaurants - thoughtful, personal, completely them.

The bay's texture mirrored in Alex's pearl-adorned veil - every detail echoing the water

As the sun began to set, we stole away for portraits. The light turned soft and blue, that brief perfect window when everything glows. There's something mythological about couples photographed by the sea - the ancient pull of water, the way humans have always been drawn to coastlines, the endless stories about what lives beneath the waves. Alex and Mike against the bay felt timeless, like they could have been standing there a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. The ocean doesn't care about trends or aesthetics. It just is. And when you photograph people against it, they become part of that permanence.

First look on the Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club docks with the bay stretching behind them

The celebration continued long into the night - dancing under cafe lights, toasts that made everyone laugh and cry, the kind of joy that comes from bringing everyone you love to the place you love most. Alex and Mike had created exactly what they wanted: a wedding that felt like them, rooted in the water, surrounded by the people who matter most.

Alex dancing to Pink Pony Club - the dance floor erupting under cafe lights

View the complete gallery from Alex & Mike's Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club wedding

Planning & Design: Sarah Mastriano, A Lovely Universe

Floral Design: Daybreak Flowers | Videography: Margo Sees Stars | Venue: Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club | Band: Dart Collective | Paper Design: Charlie Whiskey Design, Minted Weddings | Hair & Makeup: Beauty on Location NJ

Fine Art Manhattan Wedding Photographer: Where Sophistication Meets Emotion

Hailing a cab from Central Park East to Restaurant Daniel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

I wasn’t the type of kid that dreamed of moving to New York. My older sister discovered musical theater at a young age. My mom would bring her up here from Philadelphia to see Broadway shows every so often. She dreamed of being on the stage and living in the big city. While I knew I wanted to be a photographer, New York never really factored into my imagination. I had a vague fantasy of exploring the world for National Geographic. I would pour over photographs from foreign lands and my consciousness would somehow be transported to exotic and mystical places. I couldn’t conceptualize what it would take to live that life, but I knew that photographs had power and I wanted to wield it. So until high school, Broadway was my only real exposure to the big apple. I hadn’t yet understood the myriad of dreams New York is capable of containing. She’s like a cosmic Russian doll with the dreams of multitudes nestled inside her.

Annie & Patrick sharing a special Champagne Toast at the iconic Chelsea Hotel in the Flatiron District shortly after it was remodeled.

Studying photography was absolutely a dream come true to me, I loved discovering its secrets and magic, but Philadelphia left me feeling lonely. I never really fit into the culture and I constantly had the feeling I was missing something. While New York wasn’t yet calling me, I felt an intense desire for my life to be something more. My professor sensed an innate talent in me and arranged for me to do my junior year internship at the prestigious Pace MacGill gallery on 57th and Madison streets. I was dazzled by the experience. It was like I was peeking through a door that was left cracked open to a world I never knew existed and I stood transfixed by the sights. It was the kind of classic internship that movies are made of: no pay and long hours doing all kinds of menial tasks. I would regularly spend all day running all over town dropping off prints or picking up frames or delivering expensive gifts to high end clients. I got to meet the inimitable Irving Penn on one such occasion. On another such errand I stood patiently in Duane Michals’ kitchen while he chatted amiably as he bent over his washing machine, which as it turned out, was his favorite place to sign his prints. Emmet Gowin and his wife Edith were regulars at the gallery, coming in to help catalog his archive. These were heroes, giants even to my young photographic heart. This was in the pre-iPhone era. I once spent the better part of an afternoon trying to find my way to a film lab on Little West 12th Street which all these years later still sounds like a fictional place to me. And every Monday it was my responsibility to pick up a dozen white roses at the same flower shop on Park Avenue and arrange them in a vase for reception. It felt decadent and luxurious and I wanted more of that level of excellence.

Detail of a waiter at Bemelman’s Bar the historic Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

By the time I got back to Philadelphia for my senior year I had fully caught the bug. I started reaching out to wedding photographers immediately to see if they needed an assistant or second shooter. It was another year after I graduated before I landed a job for the semi-famous photo world darlings and identical twins Doug & Mike Starn. I moved up to Brooklyn immediately and used to ride my bike from Williamsburg to their warehouse studio in Red Hook. It was a version of New York that seems like it’s all but disappeared now. Patti Smith’s memoir ‘Just Kids’ came out just three years after I moved to Brooklyn and somehow coincided with the moment when the bottom fell out of the photography industry. It was incredibly romantic and inspiring to me to imagine Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe experiencing the New York of the 70s, true artist-bohemians living the dream. My sister never ended up singing on Broadway. Instead, she stayed in Philadelphia and pursued a career in opera. Meanwhile, I discovered a version of New York that young Carey never could have dreamed of. I found mine in the galleries, the artist studios and the warehouse spaces. I’ve lived in New York eighteen years now and I’ve still never once gone to a Broadway musical. Instead, I’ve danced till dawn at warehouses in Bushwick. I’ve partied in countless lofts and watched symphonies from skyscrapers. I’ve worked in art galleries and for photo agents and assisted on photo sets. So many doors have opened for me over the years and still, every time I get to a new one, I feel the magic. Sometimes I even close my eyes in anticipation of what otherworldly scene awaits me. Am I dreaming?

In the elevator at The Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue on our way to the first look.

Looking back on it now, I realize what a thoroughly perfect introduction I had to this city. New York is a city that is constantly changing, a whirling vortex of energy that’s nearly impossible to keep up with. Every door you open is a window into a secret world. A dream unfolding just for you. Yet there’s also this timeless iconic style imbued throughout everything that is somehow indestructible. The layers of history are steeped into the walls. My favorite thing about Manhattan weddings is still the mysterious feeling that every room I enter holds a surprise gift. A New York story waiting to be told. I once had the distinct pleasure of photographing Andra Day while she serenaded a couple at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. The next day the couple had a baby grand piano wheeled into their penthouse room and brought in a pianist to lead guests in an after-party sing along. Another time I was photographing a wedding at The Grill. I felt a buzz of energy behind me and turned around to realize the Clintons (even Chelsea) had all arrived. I hadn’t even been told they were coming. But I remember the more quotidian occurrences just as strongly, the park employee who turned a blind eye when I took portraits in Central Park’s conservatory garden without a permit. The strangers shouting congratulations whenever they see a bride on the sidewalk.

Jazz Musician playing Trumpet at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in Manhattan’s Lower East Side

Most of my couples proudly claim they aren’t traditional, that they’re doing their wedding their own way (if you listen closely you can almost hear Frank Sinatra crooning). But after so many years of photographing here in my beloved city, I’ve started to pushback. New York has its own flavor of tradition. It might not look like the weddings our friends hold in our home towns. It might not have a huge bridal party or be in the church we grew up attending, instead it looks like dinner at a glamorous New York restaurant or historic venue, a yellow taxi cab hailed between venues, a quick walk through Central Park, or maybe a champagne toast in a SoHo loft, vows at City Hall followed by oysters at Grand Central. Even as I write this I can hear Alicia Keys anthem blaring in my head, “… concrete jungle where dreams are made of.” My job now is to document your dreams.

Kiss Your Cameras For Me.

It was the most unexpected surprise. I had traveled all the way to Turkey for a mystical dream come true - to dance five days with the Sufi dervishes. The journey there was one of those arduous treks where nothing flowed quite as smoothly as I wanted. For starters, while dragging my luggage between platforms I watched the A train pull off without me, sentencing me to a twenty minute wait in the five am sweltering heat of July, helplessly sweating into the clothes I would be forced to wear for the next twenty four hours.

I slept in fits and starts. Every time I fell asleep a baby or fellow passenger woke me violently. There was a layover in London, a train to a friend’s, a car back to the airport. Another flight. When I finally touched ground on Turkish soil, I expected relief. Friends of my host were to pick me up and drive me the last leg. I greeted them excitedly, they greeted me indifferently. I had imagined being welcomed with loving arms as an honored guest, sharing notes on how excited we were. Instead, they spoke to each other in Turkish, while I sat silently in the back so tired I could barely string a sentence together in English. Something had been lost in translation, something cultural and beyond my reach. I felt lonely and off center. As omens go, not the best of beginnings.

But of course the journey started long before that. It started two months earlier in a psilocybin ceremony in Brooklyn. It started four months before that at an ecstatic dance retreat in Brazil. It started five years ago when I dove into dreamwork and started letting my dreams be me guides. I guess it really it started ten years ago, still grieving the death of my mother, staring into the ocean on a beach in Ocean City. Where, having just completed a yoga teacher training, in a moment of absolute clarity, I decided the best way to dedicate myself to my spiritual practice was to go back to wedding photography.

What’s important to know is that this trip was not about weddings or wedding photography. I had traveled half way across the world to drop into ecstatic trance, to whirl for hours on end. I didn’t even bring a camera, not really. A friend had gifted me a little toy film camera to play with, so I brought that and two rolls of film. No one here even knew what I did for a living. No one cared. Here, your credentials were based in what kinds of healing art you study and it takes too long to explain how wedding photography qualifies.

The name we use for this ceremony is Sema. Our Sema was to last for five days and nights. The musicians would start playing, they would change every hour, but the music would never cease, and as long as two Semazans were circling, we went on. Sometimes we whirl, sometimes we walk the circle. And always there are people sitting around us in support. When we enter the space, we bow, then we kiss the ground. When we pass the musicians, we bow again.

Sema means many things, but mostly we say it means to listen. So I listened, and I did what I do best as a photographer, I watched. I can’t tell you all of what I witnessed. It’s too sacred. But one thing that caught my heart deeply: each time I watched the musicians pull their beloved instruments from their cases, and each time they put them away, they gave them a little kiss. A gesture of love, so small yet so mighty, imbuing the inanimate with life. As Semazans we bow to the musicians, as musicians we bow to our instruments.

It took me days to settle. Shedding the layers of travel and landing back into myself was a chore. Rather than the bliss I had experienced whirling in Brazil, each time I whirled, I found myself nauseous and shaky. I tried to surrender to the discomfort. I did surrender to it. Slowly I found my rhythm, I walked when I couldn’t whirl.

The energy was intense and indescribable. The music, otherworldly. I could sit and soak in it for hours. I did. Then I would retreat to my room, curl into my pajamas and gush with my roommate about how magical it all was. It was during one of these breaks that we heard a bit of a commotion. We could feel that there was something happening outside of the Sema, but it wasn’t clear what. A passerby asked if we were going to the wedding. What an odd collision of vocation and passion I felt. To be here, so far from the world I know, and suddenly feel compelled to grab my (toy) camera, kiss it and stand in sacred witness. Only in dreams have I photographed a wedding with so little notice. Only in dreams would I show up to a wedding with a toy for a camera. Only in dreams have I photographed a wedding with two brides, and two grooms. Here, where I can’t even understand the words. Yet, where nothing is lost is translation, where I know exactly what to do and where to stand. Here, photographing a wedding, I find myself completely centered and at home.

This journey started with my decision to return to wedding photography as spiritual practice and continues through my dreamwork practice.