Rhonda and Ralford selected a Saturday in early February for their Ocean View Ballast Point wedding. It’s an excellent venue that sits right on the water. Beating the ocean view, especially for the reception is hard. While other Navy wedding venues in San Diego have great views, the reception space is usually indoors. At this venue, you get the luxury of an oceanfront, open-air, reception space.

With military sites, there are a lot of rules. At this venue, one of the rules has to do with the timing of events. There are certain time restrictions put on ceremony and cocktail start times. In the winter, it means that the ceremony starts after sunset. I liked the idea of this since it the ceremony would have a colorful backdrop. While I like to use those colors for portraits having it for the ceremony is nice as well. With the rapid light changing conditions, it was important to have lighting set up ahead of time to make sure that there was not a moment missed.

It was great working with Rhonda and Ralford. They arrived in high spirits and their wedding party had a lot of great energy. When working on a bit of a time crunch, it’s good to have a wedding party that is cooperative and ready to pose for some photos.

One of my favorite moments was watching the ceremony start as the orange in the sky from the sunset started to fade away. It was a beautiful sight. As we went through the processional I could see Ralford to through a lot of happy emotions. It started with some joking around with his best man as the wedding party began to walk down the aisle, to tears when he laid eyes on his bride for the first time. It was a special moment.

I also enjoyed watching them celebrate on the dance floor. From the parent dances to the dance circles with kids in the middle, there were lots of reasons to smile and laugh.

A special thanks to Amy June Weddings for making sure that things ran on time to make sure that we could make the most of the photo opportunities.