20 Dec The Ziemanski Wedding – Birmingham Alabama Wedding Photography
Birmingham Alabama Wedding Photography
Name | Jillian & Marshall
Date | 08.20.16
Ceremony Venue | Gabrella Manor
Reception Venue | Gabrella Manor
Photography | Nick Frontiero Photography
Jillian was one of those fantastic brides that emails about availability and pricing one afternoon, only to ring the very next day and secure me for her wedding day…..of which was only a couple of months before the actual day! You gotta love those brides that are decisive and know what they want!! We quickly scheduled an engagement session, where I learned that they met through a popular dating site, had a mutual love for coffee, and an incredible connection and understanding of each other. They were two of the most calm people I have ever ran across. So, their wedding venue Gabrella Manor in Birmingham, Al, is an out of this world venue here in Alabama……it’s probably the most European looking, aesthetically pleasing venue you will find here, and it’s kind of hidden and unlike anything else in the Birmingham area.
To give you a prime example of the absolute calmness Jillian and Marshall are instilled with check out this exact scenario that happened on their wedding day: It’s August in Alabama, which means the weather forecast will always read as a 20% chance of rain on any given day. If you’re local here, you know that at the drop of a dime those chances could easily increase to an 80% chance of thunderstorms, completely out of nowhere. Of course, we had a back up plan…..they could have just moved everything into the reception area for the ceremony ahead of time…….or test our weather apps to see if the line of thunderstorms would actually come right at us as the radar indicated. Jillian calmly decided that we would stick with the original plan…..with Marshall’s studies of aerospace and working for the United States Air Force, he totally knew it was going to rain. It didn’t matter or rattle either of them, all that mattered to either one of them was being able to exchange vows of forever to each other in the presence of their closest friends and family.
Fortunately, we had an umbrella handy and of course when it came time to take portraits of the two of them as a newly married couple the rain subsided quite a bit. We figured we were good for family portraits at the original ceremony location, but then we were completely wrong……another downpour began just as we started! Nonetheless, neither Jillian or Marshall ever became frustrated or bothered with the weather at all. We simply pulled family together during the reception…..we made it work and the images are beautiful! The speeches given at the wedding reception you see here still give me chills to this day. Jillian and Marshall are two special people without a doubt. If you attended this wedding, you could just feel it. No question, the best speeches I’ve ever heard at a wedding reception to date!
