Empire Mine Wedding | Emily + Dave - Lauren Lindley Photography

I spent six years as a camp counselor in college at an all girls non-denominational summer camp called Camp Mystic, that sought to enrich the lives of young girls by helping them become better people, giving them the space to allow themselves to grow as young adults and let camp bring out the best in them, and develop spiritually, however that may be. Every year on one special day, we told the story of the Warm Fuzzies, about two people who lived in a land where everyone was happy because they were always sharing, giving and recieving these little balls of fluff called, of course, “warm fuzzies.” Since Warm Fuzzies were “always given freely, getting enough of them was never a problem. There were always plenty to go around, and so everyone was happy and felt warm and fuzzy most of the time.” The story goes on and there’s some melodrama and sadness to overcome, as all good stories have, but in the end, we’d give all the campers a whole bunch of warm fuzzies and they would spend the rest of the term handing them out to people, bringing unbridled joy and happiness to all of the land.

Where am I going with this in a wedding blog post?

I’ll tell you:

Emily is a Warm Fuzzy.

She is the warmest of warm fuzzies. The minute you meet her, she envelops you with these large, gracious, giving eyes and she brings you in and makes you feel loved and welcome and fabulous. Dave is hardly any different: grinning, congenial, extremely smart, and with a snarky fun wit that makes Em light up. You can see it in their wedding photos: it was seriously difficult to get a photo of Em not laughing.

Their Empire Mine Wedding at Empire Mine State Park in Nevada City, outside of Grass Valley, CA was stunningly beautiful. It looks like fairy land: everything was green, awash in golden sunlight and etheral. I am so over the moon for this venue that I cannot wait to return to it. Just a word of warning: if you hire me to be your wedding photographer, person reading this, then you best put an hour of portraits on your schedule beause I could take portraits there for DAYS and not exhaust all the awesome out of it. It’s GORGEOUS.

But, back to Em and Dave.

These two people are so rad, so loving, and so secure in themselves, their faith and their friendships that they are nothing short of inspirational. They are giving and gorgeous and I know that only extreme happiness is coming their way because they ask for nothing in return but laughter and smiles. They deserve every bit of their joy and I feel extremely lucky to have met a real life warm fuzzy and better yet, to have photographed her wedding.