St. Andrew by the Lake Church Wedding on Toronto Island

I would like to start off this post by wishing every women a happy International Women’s Day!

The beauty of being a Toronto wedding photographer who focuses on photojournalistic wedding photography is that it allows me to enjoy weddings on any scale, large and small. Chiharu and Danny’s beautiful and emotional wedding on Toronto’s Centre Island edges towards the cozy spectrum.

Since this was a fairly low key event, I was asked to photograph the ceremony and a few formal portraits afterwards. My afternoon started by walking around the Harbour Front trying to find the water taxi that was reserved to ferry all of the guests from the city to the island. After a couple of bewildering conversations with a Toronto dock worker and a parking attendant, I was able to find the promised water taxi, which was docked at the foot of York St. & Queen’s Quay. As a Toronto wedding photographer, I frequently have to factor for the unpredictable traffic along the city’s main routes, but this short ride was a joyful experience. To top things off, the captain dropped us off almost directly behind the church, which I appreciated considering my camera bag weighs in excess of 15 pounds.

As far as churches go, St. Andrew by the Lake Church has a fairly conventional exterior, but its architectural strength lies in its interior ambiance. All of my hesitations about the location were set aside as soon as I stepped inside: I was blown away by the gorgeous stained glass windows that filled the room with a spectacle of soft, multifaceted light. Photojournalistic wedding photographers are typically challenged by the lighting conditions found in older churches as they skew toward being perpetually dim and illuminated by nasty artificial light fixtures that do horrors to all skin tones.

Fortunately, the weather and the location proved themselves and warm sunshine beamed through the windows to supply beautiful sculpting light for most of the ceremony. One of the wedding photographs below was taken with a fisheye lens and captures the complementary floor and ceiling details. I was quite fond of the location, and the exterior grew on me as we proceeded with the formal portraits before wrapping up.

The ceremony itself was quite touching. Chiharu read a letter to her parents, who travelled to Toronto from Japan to attend the wedding ceremony. During the reading, she had a difficult time maintaining her composure—it was a definite tear-jerker. After the touching ceremony came to a close, the couple and the guests headed outside to the tune of the wedding bells. We took a handful of family portraits and called it a day. The newlyweds and their family and friends went on to have their first dinner as a married couple at The Rectory Café just down the path. It was an honour to share this day with them and they were pleased with the final outcome. It’s always fulfilling to be a Toronto wedding photographer!