Joanna & Joseph St. Joseph’s Church & Hotel St. Claire San Jose, CA

Here’s a jolly ‘ole wedding I found that I photographed waaaayyyy back in 2006!. The exact date was Saturday August 26, 2006. This was a great wedding that started with Groom’s prep and Bridal prep at the Hotel St. Claire in San Jose, CA. It’s common for couples to get married at St Joseph’s church [where this couple got married] and have your reception either here at the Hotel St. Claire or up the street at the Fairmont Hotel.

In any case, Joanna & Joseph had their reception at the Fabulous Hotel St. Claire, a venue I have been proud to work at least a dozen times in my 20 year career. Here are some of the amazing wedding pictures that I took that day. If you would like to see more, please send me an email and we can make arrangements to meet and for me to show them to you. Comments to follow pics, enjoy…..

We began with pictures of the Groom in the Lobby of the Hotel.

Yes, this is a good idea.

The father of the bride. I always strive for natural poses in a natural setting even if the setting is unnatural.

The bride expressed to me that she really wanted to see the details of her dress.

The girls are horsing around before the wedding.

I love getting organic and natural journalistic wedding shots such as this one below.

The mother of the bride passed down a ring to the Bride. It was a very emotional exchange.

Some poses over by the window. I use natural light whenever possible to achieve a more organic nature to me wedding photographs.

Ok so now we are over at St Joseph’s church in downtown San Jose, CA. The church is right up the street from Hotel St. Claire. It s a beautiful church with a huge DOME. I have been fortunate enough to work here at least a dozen times in my 20 year career as a wedding photographer.

It gets pretty dark in there and they do not allow any flash for the ceremony. Most catholic churches do not allow flash for the wedding. However, from this far away, a flash would not do any good. I rely on my FAST lenses and steady hand to get little stolen moments such as this.

Ok, this shot is up from the balcony. Sometimes, they don’t open the balcony so I was happy to get these from the top.

After the wedding I took them over to this little square PLAZA like area, I forgot what it’s called. Anyway, this was a fun couple and I got many natural style wedding photos.

So back at the Hotel St. Claire. This is a picture of the front of Hotel St. Claire from across the street.

The room looked fabulous as usual. The Hotel St. Claire has a great wedding and banquet manager.

A shout out to my buddy Adrian from Sound In Motion DJ’s. I worked with this guy many times. Him and his partner KING RAFFI. We’re all old timers in this biz…lol

The first dance of the bride and groom were very emotional. I got a combination of close ups [like this one] and wide angle.

They cut the cake and that was pretty much the end of the night.

I hope you liked all these wedding photos from way back in 2006. Just goes to show that I have been doing great work for many years. My style has changed a bit from this time. And I have a new camera since then. So my quality is much higher now as well. But I think it’s great to look back every once in a while. It’s important to know where you been, in order to have a clear vision of where you are going!