“Jen Wheeldon here – albeit from a different email address than I was using previously.
I, of course am more than happy to sing Tanya’s praises. In fact, Tanya should get far more credit than she ever will from just her photographs alone. Her photos are amazing – but you can see that, what was more important for me was the fact that Tanya was real, honest, patient, flexible and has the most amazing warm and bubbly spirit.
Our wedding was bananas. We had a double wedding (us in the morning and my husband’s brother and wife in the afternoon followed by a shared reception). We planned the wedding with Morgan and I in Korea, his brother in Washington and his mother doing most of the work in Nova Scotia. You can imagine with a double wedding and two very different ideas of atmosphere and what a wedding should be, how crazy the planning became. This was my first clue that Tanya was going to be phenomenal. Not only was she willing and open to work with mine and Morgan’s hippy dippy community wedding ceremony as well as Jo and Liz’ more formal ceremony – but when we changed our minds back and forth about 3 zillion times about how we were going to structure things – Tanya didn’t even bat an eyelash. She was open, communicative, and willing to find a way to make things work for all of us. Such flexibility and knowing that she would be there to support what we all (okay, it was mostly me who cared about the photos) wanted out of the photos, was incredible.
Meeting with Tanya in advance of the wedding to talk about feel and atmosphere, what the day would be like – we knew from her personality that she was a perfect fit.
Day of: I showed up to the beach where the planning was happening and Tanya was already there, snapping photos of the prep – and of me, without me even noticing. In the end, these were some of my favorite photos! The documentary style ones really are so valuable. Our ceremony was a huge circle on the beach… not easy to photograph I’m sure. But in the end, by climbing on rocks, falling graciously in the water (without complaint) and somehow still remaining invisible (I don’t know how she does it!) the photos were great.
She captured an insane amount of family photos (she has so much patience!) and managed to make us all look amazing even in the glaring sun. It was fun! She had great poses that weren’t stereotypical – that was what I had wanted from her, and she delivered perfection.
I won’t have kids for years – but I already know I wouldn’t have anyone but her photograph them. She was far far far more amazing than I ever could have expected from a photographer – or even just as an awesome person.
Seriously, I don’t have anything negative or ‘constructive’ to say.
She was awesome.”
