Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

Tawnia and Chance contacted me a few days before their last minute Waterton winter wedding, and I jumped at the opportunity. I love surprises like that! Plus I was already biased to like her since her name is so close to mine :)

They had their ceremony at the Waterton Lakes Resort, and with it being off season in the town, we had full run of the venue and the entire town site.

However, the weather in Waterton was a little less than desirable. After a beautiful sunny drive in, I was shocked to arrive to a blizzard, with blowing snow and white out conditions! Very few of the mountains were even visible from within the town, which says a lot when the town is at the base of the mountains.

After we did the family photos indoors, we braved the snow for the outdoor photos they really wanted in spite of the weather. These were tricky because when the wind blew, I couldn’t even see them! Tawnia was super brave going outside with bare arms, and she barely showed her discomfort (I think Chance looked more cold than she did, hehe!). It was worth all the pain!

All of their closest friends and family were in attendance at their beautiful, intimate wedding and despite the weather outside, it was a perfect day :) (more…)

Without further ado…

Last month, Greg and Tarah had a fairy tale wedding in the mountains at Lake Louise. They spent their entire weekend at the Fairmont Chateau, which was an absolutely beautiful, romantic, and perfect venue to get married.

I brought Jan along for the weekend, and on our drive up I was quite worried about the weather… the temperature that morning hit -50C (with wind chill)!!! It had warmed up a bit (-20C) by the time we arrived in Lake Louise in the afternoon, but as we scouted out our locations for the next day, our hands kept freezing up every ten minutes. We were SO lucky the next day because it warmed up so much! I would have been so heartbroken if we couldn’t spend much time out in the snow for photos.

Tarah and Greg perfected every detail of their wedding (and even took part in the reception decor and designing the cake!). Everywhere we went, little girls stared in awe, commenting to their moms that they just saw a snow princess. We had tourists following us all day, snapping photos of the couple. Obviously they were more beautiful than the scenery :) They oozed with love, they were gorgeous, and we had more backgrounds than we knew what to do with.

Everything was perfect all day, and I’ve never had so much trouble narrowing down photos as I have this time. I have to warn you now, this post is more photo heavy than any I’ve done before, so you might not want to look at it from your iPhone ;) (more…)

I’ve known Dawn and Gregg for several years now, so it was such an honor to be asked to photograph their wedding. Gregg had wanted a big traditional wedding while Dawn had wanted to elope, so they compromised with a quaint winter wedding instead! I had a great day with them and couldn’t have asked for a better shoot :)

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