№ 07 · Wedding
Naples, Florida
Beachfront ceremonies, country club receptions, and at least one wedding closed by a coordinated fighter-jet flyover for a Naples golf professional.
Naples has its own pace, warmer, longer-lit, with weddings that begin at the shoreline and end at the country club. John has photographed Naples weddings for two decades, and the rhythm of the place has become its own kind of subject.
These pages collect a single weekend on the gulf, ceremony at the beach, dinner in the dunes, dancing under string lights until the photographer is the last one to leave.
Naples runs warmer and lights later than much of the state, which stretches the usable end of the day past where an inland venue would have lost it. Beach ceremonies here are typically set late in the afternoon for exactly that reason, and the hour that follows is the one worth planning the whole schedule around.
The shoulder season is the local advantage. Weddings happen here comfortably from October through May, and the quieter months at either end bring softer weather, emptier beaches, and considerably more room to work.
The pattern repeats: ceremony at the shoreline, dinner at the country club, dancing until the band packs up. It sounds simple and it is logistically unforgiving, because the move between the two happens exactly when the light is best and most easily wasted.
John plans that transition rather than reacting to it, which usually means the formal groupings are finished before the ceremony ends and the twenty minutes afterward are left open for the couple and the water.
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