Makenzy got married nine days before Halloween and there is no version of this post where I don’t mention that first, because I called her my haunted Victorian baby doll for the entirety of our time together and I meant it as the highest compliment I have. She wanted a Fort Worden wedding specifically, the old coastal artillery post out in Port Townsend with the barracks and the officer housing and a movie theater that’s been running since the 1920s, and she rented the whole property and got married inside that theater. Not a hall dressed up to look old. The actual Wheeler Theater, house seats and all, vows said on a stage that’s been showing films for a hundred years, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a wedding stop being generic and start being hers.
I have to tell you the other thing that happened that weekend because it’s too funny not to, and also because I stand by it completely even though it makes me look unhinged. I was staying on the property myself, in one of the officer’s row houses, and partway through the night I got so spooked I got up, got dressed in the dark, got in my car, and drove thirty minutes to a friend’s house instead of sleeping there. I don’t scare easily. I live in a genuinely haunted house of my own and have made my peace with that particular roommate situation. This was different. Nothing happened. No noise, no shadow, nothing I could point to and explain to you if you asked me to defend myself, which several people have asked me to do since. It was just wrong in there, and I believed it enough to leave a wedding venue in the middle of the night like a woman running from something. Fort Worden has a reputation if you go looking for it. I was not looking for it. Found it anyway.
None of that touched Makenzy and Scott’s day, thank god, because the reception took over one of those same officer’s row houses and it was gorgeous — wraparound porch, a floor plan built for an actual family instead of a party, guests spilling out onto the porch as it got dark and the fog rolled up off the water and the whole property did the thing it does at night where half the windows have lights on and you can’t account for all of them.
The getting-ready portraits from this wedding are some of my favorites I have ever shot, full stop, and that’s because Makenzy and I built them together before the day even started. This is the part of my work I care about most – creative symbiosis, not me directing a stranger, but two people who’ve actually talked about what the photos should feel like before the camera comes out. We talked through what the room should hold, what she should bring with her, what we wanted the light doing. She packed for it. She showed up ready to make something with me instead of just standing in front of me. I told her to bring nail polish, and partway through getting dressed she sat on the edge of the tub in a bathroom tiled floor to ceiling in cracked vintage tile and painted her toenails. I am so grateful she trusted me enough to let the day get a little weird and a little slow and completely hers.
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