The bride lost her veil in the wind. A bridesmaid face-planted in the snow. Nearly 20 guests couldn’t make it.
It sounds like the perfect condition to put any bride and groom into a panic. But that wasn’t the case for Sean and Brittany Tuohy. They ran out in a complete snowstorm to take wedding photos and said they wouldn’t change a thing about their special day.
For 11 months, Brittany and Sean had planned what they thought would be the perfect fall wedding. The couple booked a venue in Spokane, Washington, for Sept. 28, hoping it would be a pleasant day.
They wanted the changing fall leaves to be the backdrop of their wedding and planned nearly the entire event to be outside.
Brittany checked the weather for three months. The forecast always said it would be 75 and sunny, the weather every bride hopes for.
But that sun turned to rain a week before their wedding.
And then it turned to snow.
It wasn’t the kind of snow that falls gracefully from the sky, though. It was a full-blown snowstorm, with heavy winds, lots of ice, and pelting snow.
The storm was record-breaking, according to the National Weather Service. It had never snowed on Sept. 28 in Spokane before.
It got so bad that the day after their wedding, the groom and family had to push every single guest’s car out of the snow, the couple said.
“When the snow started falling, there were a lot of emotions,” Brittany said. “As soon as we were about to take the photos, it got bad.”
The couple had to quickly move their wedding indoors. They got married on the stage where their reception was.
The weather didn’t stop them from getting some phenomenal photos, though. The bride and groom rushed outside to make sure they had photos of their day—they only had several minutes.
Photographer Jaime Fletcher said she was panicking internally when she arrived. She expected the couple to feel the same, but the whole wedding party was laughing and and having fun.
“We had to make it work for what we had,” Sean said. “We weren’t going to let anything hold us back.”
In the three years Fletcher has been taking wedding photos, she’s never experienced weather conditions like this. Usually, she spends 45 minutes to an hour taking bride and groom portraits. For this wedding, she only had about 10 minutes to shoot the couple and the bridal party.
She took about 100 photos. She usually shoots three times that number.
“It was the fastest I’ve ever taken them,” she said. “It transitioned so fast into a blizzard.”
Fletcher said she thought it would only be a quick, freak storm. She wasn’t prepared with camera coverage, so she had to use a scarf to cover the camera.
Brittany said it was freezing. The wind was strong and it was icy. But Fletcher, she said, made it all look beautiful.
“It was definitely worth it,” Brittany said. “There were times I told my friends I wanted a winter wedding. … I didn’t plan for it, but I guess Mother Nature just knew.”
