{"id":292,"date":"2009-07-02T01:15:02","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T05:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/?p=292"},"modified":"2009-07-02T01:15:02","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T05:15:02","slug":"new-york-wedding-day-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/new-york-wedding-day-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Wedding Day Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Wedding Day airs this weekend with Sean and Christinas wedding . New York Daily News did a great article on Pair of Army captains gets a ‘Wedding Day’ to remember. I worked as the wedding photographer on this show aswell.
\nBY Nicole Carter DAILY NEWS <\/a><\/p>\n

Christina and Shawn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s families came together to create a dream wedding for them – with a little help from the TNT series ‘Wedding Day.’
\nShawn and Christina Fitzgerald had the perfect wedding \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to plan one detail.
\nThe Poughkeepsie couple left that to celebrity wedding planner Diann Valentine and event and food guru Alan Dunn, hosts of a new series on TNT called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wedding Day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; Shawn and Christina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s episode runs Saturday.<\/p>\n

The new reality show surprises one deserving couple every week and in a matter of days helps them overcome obstacles \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s money or illness or timing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that have been preventing the Big Day from happening.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153For Shawn and Christina, we had four days to pull it off,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Valentine. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was a challenge for us, working around their military commitments.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Both captains in the U.S. Army, the two had been engaged for nearly five years but had spent as much time apart as they did together.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were able to come home and do about a week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth of planning at a time, but it simply wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough. To visit reception sites, interview photographers, pick invitations all takes a lot more time than we had anticipated,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Shawn, 26, currently on duty in Iraq. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had set a date for Sept. 17, 2010, but even that date would have been hard to keep.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThe show notified the couple via satellite last winter that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be flying home for a week-long vacation in New York City \u00e2\u20ac\u201d thanks to a nomination from their families. Meanwhile, back in Poughkeepsie, the experts got busy creating the dream wedding.
\nThe couple didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t spend a dime, thanks to the show and local donations.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was more about the experience than the big beautiful wedding for Shawn and Christina. But we gave them that too,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Dunn.
\nThe pair met in 2003 in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., on their first Army assignment. They were friends at first, going to the gym, shopping and cooking together, but soon realized they were in love in a nearly impossible situation for a relationship.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There have been numerous times in our relationship where \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 comes second,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Shawn, who has spent as many as 22 months apart from Christina. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our Army commitments kept us overseas in Korea, Germany and Iraq.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nLuckily, traveling has become one of the couple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s favorite things.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They had been all over the world on duty, and they really wanted to share their experiences with their families,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Valentine. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We went with a 1930s world travelers theme, nostalgic and classic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nAnthony\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pier 9 in New Windsor, the event space where the reception was held, was decorated with old trunks, leather lounge furniture, and video screens with photos of places the couple have visited.
\nThe donations rolled in for these selfless soldiers: a $2,500 Monique Lhuillier off-the-shoulder gown for the bride.
\nA $10,000 donation to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund from Nationwide Insurance in the couple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name. Flower arrangements from local florists. And the time and expertise of two big-bucks wed-ding planners.
\nBut the most meaningful contributors came with the smallest price tag: their families. The design team enlisted the help of both sides to keep it personal and budget-friendly.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The families created postcards, just silly photographs of them dressed up in \u00e2\u20ac\u212230s garb with sweet messages, which they will send the couple once they returned to Iraq,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Dunn.
\nThe newlyweds returned to duty just a few days after the wedding.
\nThe couple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fathers also built a wooden gate, adorned with photos of a young Christina and Shawn that would serve as the entryway of the aisle at St. Mary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Church \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the same church where the bride\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents wed 28 years ago.
\nAnother project for the families: passports.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had them create little passports with Shawn and Christina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s photos inside, with a description of their love story,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Valentine. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a perfect, inexpensive and personal keepsake for the guests.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nAt the end of the day, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald were nearly blown away.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I knew this was no typical wedding,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Shawn, who expects to be home in October, a few months after Christina. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I felt like the luckiest man in the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n

\"Wedding

Wedding Day TNT New York<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Wedding Day airs this weekend with Sean and Christinas wedding . New York Daily News did a great article on Pair of Army captains gets a ‘Wedding Day’ to remember. I worked as the wedding photographer on this show aswell. BY Nicole Carter DAILY NEWS Christina and Shawn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s families came together to create […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[296,236,255],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tnt","tag-wedding-day","tag-wedding-photographer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianjohnsonphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}