Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

Joy received a wonderful gift of birthday celebration extended family photos when her family came to Lethbridge for her big day. Her three daughters and their families all came home to celebrate for a few days, giving her the chance to see all of her grandchildren who had moved away.

As happy as Joy was to see everyone, the kids were even happier! They were bursting with excitement to go on their outdoor adventure in Indian Battle Park and play with their cousins, grandma, and aunts and uncles. After the posed photos were done, all of the kids got to run around and play around the bridge.

p.s. One of my favourite things about Joy’s family is that there are four sets of twins!

2020 definitely seemed to be the year for Lethbridge large family photos! An in-law from one of my previous extended family sessions that year rounded up her family and they got together to celebrate their father Roy’s 60th birthday, as well as welcome a new baby into the family!

Woutera and Roy loved a nature look so we used one of the big fallen trees in Indian Battle Park as the base for posing. This is always a win for multi-generational sessions because the kids love climbing the logs!

Once the kids’ photos were finished, all the adults had their turn getting photos with their parents.

Marie and Ed celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary with Indian Battle Park extended family photos. We had planned to do this since the winter and weren’t quite sure until the last minute if it could be a go! Luckily everyone was able to get together to celebrate their parents and we had such a beautiful summer night to do the photos.

Each individual family had their photos taken while we waited for the full group to arrive. Considering how late in the day we started, the children all did amazing! We didn’t lose any to nap time and they loved played with their cousins and grandparents alongside the high level bridge.

It seems to be becoming a tradition that when Marg and Craig get their family together for photos, the wind comes along too! We first experienced this in a big way for their daughter’s wedding in Waterton. A couple years later, the wind arrived just in time that morning. Luckily this left us with tons of leaves on the ground for the kids to play with during their Henderson Lake extended family session and the big trees at the park provided just enough shelter.

Marg and Craig’s children and grandkids traveled from around Alberta to be there for their morning photos in Lethbridge and everyone had so much fun playing together! The kids couldn’t decide if they should play with each other, with their aunts and uncles, or with Grandma and Grandpa, all of whom were showering them with attention.

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This Indian Battle Park extended family photography session was a Christmas gift that was meant to take place outdoors back in December, but it was -30C the entire time the family was together! They made the wise decision to postpone until spring when everyone could actually be happy and comfortable in the photos. After a heavy rainfall earlier that day, everything was so green and fresh in the river bottom!

Three generations got together for this family session. The middle generation are part of a blended family, so they had both sets of their parents involved. Without my handy list of how everyone is related, it would have been impossible to tell sibling from cousin, sister from step sister, etc. Even all of the people who married into the family get along so comfortably with everyone that it’s hard to tell who is the sibling and who is the spouse! Everyone makes up one tightly knit family despite moving away, having children of their own, and seeing less of each other. This was such a great environment for the little kids who were happy to run to anyone there for comfort!

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This family photo ended up being downsized a little… Enough of Jenny and Herb’s grandchildren fell ill the weekend of their Nicholas Sheran extended family photos that they decided to just do photos with their children, bringing our 250 person session down to 22! Despite the lack of children, I still had to make some silly faces to get smiles out of a few of the men :)

Herb and Jenny are such a sweet couple and show so much kindness towards their family. All of the siblings are hilarious together and I got to enjoy an hour of teasing banter as they hassled each other. It was wonderful to have their children get together for their 60th wedding anniversary!

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