Johnmatt & Katie
An intimate wedding on the sands of Palm Beach.
The Occidental Grand Aruba · Palm Beach, Aruba · Summer 2014
There are weddings you photograph, and then there are weddings you live. This one was the latter.
I've known Johnmatt for years. When he called me about photographing his wedding — not in Massachusetts, not down the road, but in Aruba — I didn't hesitate for a second. I'd be on a plane.
What I didn't mention to many people at the time: I had gotten married myself just three weeks earlier. I was fresh off my own wedding, still in that suspended, golden state that the weeks after your wedding put you in, and I was heading to Aruba to photograph one of my closest friends marry the woman he loved on a beach at sunset. There are worse ways to spend a week.
This is Johnmatt and Katie's wedding. It still stays with me.
Palm Beach, Aruba.
As good as it sounds.
The Occidental Grand Aruba sat directly on Palm Beach — one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the Caribbean. White sand, calm turquoise water, and a western exposure that means every evening ends in something worth photographing. The hotel has since changed hands and carries a different name today, but in the summer of 2014 it was exactly the right backdrop for exactly this wedding.
Aruba sits outside the hurricane belt, which means the weather is reliably extraordinary — warm, breezy, and clear in a way that feels almost unfair if you've just flown in from New England. It was hot, as Aruba always is, but the kind of heat that feels appropriate when you're standing on a beach surrounded by everyone you love.
This wasn't a fly-in,
ceremony, fly-out kind of wedding.
The days leading up to the ceremony were spent together — dinners, nights out in downtown Aruba, and more than one evening at a piano bar that had no business being as good as it was. About twenty guests had made the trip, and because the group was tight — real friends, real family — it felt less like a destination wedding and more like a week-long celebration with a ceremony in the middle.
That intimacy showed up in every frame I made.
Red, white, and tan
on a Caribbean beach.
Katie wore a fitted white gown — clean, elegant, exactly right for a beach ceremony in that heat. Her bridesmaids were all in red, which against the white sand and blue water created a palette I could not have art directed better if I tried. Johnmatt was in tan trousers and a white button-down. His groomsmen matched the tan but wore blue — the whole group looked like they belonged there, which is exactly what you want when your wedding venue is a beach in the Caribbean.
The groomsmen were exactly what you'd expect from a group of close friends at a destination wedding — rambunctious, loud, genuinely happy. The bridesmaids matched their energy. Everyone was already celebrating before the ceremony started.
The light at 5:30
in Aruba. There's nothing like it.
At 5:30 in the evening, Johnmatt and Katie exchanged their vows on the beach at Palm Beach. No officiant, no program, no formality beyond the words themselves — just the two of them, their daughter beside them, their closest people gathered around, and the Caribbean stretching out behind them.
Beach goers paused to watch. That happens sometimes at beach ceremonies, and when it does it's always a good sign — strangers stopping because something real is happening. We were racing the sun through the formal portraits and I knew it. There's a particular kind of focus that comes from knowing you have twenty minutes of that light left. Every frame counted.
"We were racing the sun and I knew it. Every frame counted."
String lights.
Twenty people. All night.
After the ceremony the celebration moved to an outdoor dance floor at the hotel, strung with twinkling lights overhead. Twenty people in a space like that feels exactly right — close enough that the energy stays high all night, intimate enough that nobody is eating dinner with strangers. The red and white of the wedding palette carried through into the reception details, and the whole evening felt cohesive in the way that smaller weddings always do.
The night went late. Of course it did.
One more reason
to love this week.
The day after the wedding, Johnmatt's sister gathered everyone on the beach for something special — a gender reveal for her own baby, due later that year. I photographed that too. Standing on the same beach, twenty-four hours later, watching the same group of people celebrate again — a different kind of joy this time, quieter and full of anticipation.
It was a girl. It was one of those moments that reminds you why destination weddings are really about so much more than the wedding itself.
I went back two weeks later
for my own honeymoon.
I already knew the island, already knew Palm Beach, already knew what that light looked like at 5:30 in the evening when the sun is twenty minutes from the horizon. Going back felt like returning to something.
That's what Aruba does to you.
If you're planning a wedding there and you're from New England, I'd love to be your photographer. I'm based in southeastern Massachusetts, which means we can meet locally — in person, over coffee — long before your wedding day. And when I show up on Palm Beach, I already know what I'm walking into.
Planning a wedding
in Aruba?
I'm based in southeastern Massachusetts and available to meet locally before your wedding day. Destination wedding collections are all-inclusive — no travel fees, no itemized expenses. Coverage begins at $5,995.
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