Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

Peggy and Lourens celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary last year and thought that would be a great time to get the gang together for anniversary family photos! The group has grown by quite a few little members since our last session, which meant a lot more dancing around and silly songs by the adults this time.

The little kids did great considering they all wanted to run around and explore the nature park instead of pose (especially the littlest ones who had just learned to walk), but many aunts and uncles came to the rescue.

To switch things up from last time, we visited Indian Battle Park in Lethbridge. One thing that was like their last session was the risk of being rained out again! We had better luck though and no umbrellas were needed this year :)

It’s been such an honour watching this family grow, and I hope to follow them through their next 30 years of anniversaries!

When Erica contacted me to do her 10th anniversary family photos, I thought it would be fun to dig up her and Bill’s wedding photos from a decade ago for comparison. This is one of the weddings I did before I had my own business so it was going way back! Some of the photos were a little embarrassing to look back on, but I loved seeing how much I’ve improved since then.

Some observations:
1. Crazy Cakes has always had that square hole in the wall. (I’d normally edit that out, but it’s cute to see the building hasn’t aged much!)
2. Ten years ago the Dutch angle was very popular in wedding photography and I had a lot of trouble pulling out old photos to recreate that didn’t make me dizzy with their tilt. Wikipedia says, “the Dutch angle is one of many cinematic techniques often used to portray psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed,” making me scratch my head as to how this was such a huge wedding photography trend!
3. Erica and Bill are just as in love as 10 years ago.

It’s amazing to see the happy family they’ve grown into. Their two boys are such joyful, energetic kids and had a blast finding new surfaces to jump off of throughout the photos. We started the session downtown to revisit a few of the locations we had used in their wedding photos. Next we headed to the Helen Schuler Nature Reserve so we could make giant piles of leaves for throwing. I think our success at having fun is directly related to how many leaves the boys had to pull out of their shirts when we were done!

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Haley contacted me with a great vision for Waterton sunset anniversary photos. She and Stephen wanted to celebrate their anniversary trip to Waterton by recreating some of their wedding photos! They dressed very similar to their wedding day with one exception: Haley’s original wedding dress had been stolen during a break-in, and she managed to track down a nearly identical dress. Luckily they scheduled just days before the smoke got bad so we were able to get amazing views of the mountains with only a little bit of haze. After we finished in the town (which has a crazy early sunset thanks to the mountains!) we drove to the lookout to take full advantage of the setting sun.

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Louis is a true romantic. For his 50th wedding anniversary with Laurie he surprised her with a trip to Waterton, a stay at the historic Prince of Wales Hotel, a fun weekend filled with exploring the park, and a Waterton anniversary portrait session.

I met with them at the hotel where we decided against the overlook photos in the original plan… because my goodness, was it windy! Instead we found shelter lower down at Linnett Lake and within the townsite by the docks, and luckily didn’t run into any of the bears that have been frequenting the town. (Though we were told we missed a bear visit by 15 minutes!)

Don’t let the fact that they prefer to be serious in photos fool you… throughout the session, Louis and Laurie constantly made each other laugh and are obviously still so in love after all these years. I wish them another happy 50 years together :)

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I love photographing friends so I was super happy when Amy and Kyle came to me for updated photos just before their wedding anniversary. We did their Lethbridge spring couple photos at Aperture Park which, like most of Lethbridge, is still covered in all those amazing blossoms! In between awkward giggles (I mean really, do you normally stare at your spouse for that long and that close?) they had so many moments of pure love and happiness. This felt a lot more like an engagement session than photos of partners who have been together for years :)

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I’m always head over heels for couples who are truly in love, and John and Denice definitely fall into that category celebrating their 60th anniversary! They still look at each other with such care and are so sweet together. I met up with them and their children’s families for some celebratory family reunion photos and had a great time with everyone… and we even had a rain-free day to pull this off! (more…)