Last weekend I was invited to a wedding in the city of Bodrum, Turkey. Okay, I wasn't technically invited, it was Emma and I was tagging along. And I invited my camera.

This was my first time in the country and also my first Turkish style wedding. While it wasn't a conservative traditional Muslim ceremony, it was full of local traditions, which I believe represent modern Turkish customs. It also had so many foreign guests that the whole party was a mixture of everything.

The ceremony took place in the beautiful coastal city of Bodrum, which I was surprised to discover was the historical city of Halicarnassus. Yes, the one that has the Mausoleum, but that’s a whole different post (stay tuned!).

The following photos show my point of view of this celebration. I was there as a guest and not as a photographer, so most pictures are from my table. I also want to point out that my intention, as opposed to the official wedding photographer, was not to make everything and everyone look perfect and beautiful (although it was), but to capture memories. 

I leave this selection as a gift to the bride and groom so they can look back and remember (or discover details of) the moments as they were, with all the tension, nervousness, joy, happiness and, at the end, fatigue of a long day with friends and family. In my opinion these candid moments are better able to bring back memories than posed clicks. 

I won’t be captioning all pictures, just a few I feel need a commentary.  

This tradition here was new to me. The groom starts dancing alone while people come up and throw money at him. Soon the bride joins and they keep making it rain cash.

Of course, one most waited for moments of the eveneing  was the bouquet throw.

After the ceremony was over, we did a small photo session in almost complete darkness. Forgive the graininess of everything, I believe my ISO was 40,000. 

Then we went to the beach and lit up balloons.