A baseball wedding in Kenosha
Ashley and Matt are two friendly, baseball loving people that were married at Kenosha Kingfish Stadium with a reception at the Fountain Banquet Hall in Sturtevant.
I’ve worked with a lot of couples that love baseball and even love it enough to incorporate it into their engagement photos, either baseball caps and balls or Milwaukee Brewers gear, but Ashley and Matt were the first to photograph a ceremony specifically on a baseball diamond.
They even broke new ground with their wedding, since the Kingfish told them that their wedding would be a first for the stadium.
The Kenosha Kingfish Stadium
Right away there were a lot of new opportunities for creativity having a wedding at a baseball field, along with several challenges. The first opportunity that came along on their day was where Matt and the groomsmen got ready, which was the actual locker rooms.
I loved this look, since the lockers were more or less aesthetically pleasing, painted a deep blue with a simple look.
After Matt had gotten ready I took some more serious photos with him where he was holding a bat sitting on a stool with the locker behind him. I also took several pictures of Matt’s details in the locker. The locker room scene gave everything a more masculine look.
On Ashley’s side, one of my favorite pictures during the getting ready part was when I hung up her wedding dress on the netting between the stands and the batters box.
From here I took a photo from both sides, one side showing the baseball field in the background and one side showing the stands in the background. Sometimes you never know which photo will work out best, so whenever you have a chance as a photographer it’s always best to “work the scene” as much as you can.
A pre-wedding walkthrough
One thing I offer all my couples is a chance to walk through the venue before the actual wedding day and in this case it really helped with Ashley’s getting ready photos.
When we did our walkthrough I saw that Ashley was going to be getting ready with her bridesmaids in an office room.
There were office supplies everywhere and nothing was romantic about the spot. It wasn’t set up to be photographed and unless I shot everything really up close and tight it would be hard to make the space look romantic and special.
So, I asked if anyone had curtains or drapes to hang up, even on one side and sure enough one of her bridesmaids jumped at the idea and took care of it on her wedding day.
Hanging up a curtain on one wall at least gave us one corner of the room that was devoid of office desks, printers, papers and pens.
This is definitely not a super ideal situation. It can be a hassle and it still doesn’t look the best if the curtain is too small but it’s more of a break in case of emergency situation.
The other big challenge for getting married on a baseball field is the sunlight. For obvious reasons, there are no trees or any other shade on a baseball diamond and most people get married in the early afternoon in summer, so if it’s a sunny beautiful day you could really be in a pickle trying to make the photos turn out softer with less glare on faces.
Lucky for us, this turned out to be a worry that I didn’t need to lose sleep over. It was a beautiful cloudy day and the clouds helped the light become much softer and more photogenic.
Portraits at Harbor Park in Kenosha
After the ceremony, we all traveled to Harbor Park in Kenosha for the wedding portraits with the wedding party and couple.
When I photographed this wedding, I hadn’t had a ton of experience taking portraits in Kenosha, but we did take Ashley and Matt’s engagement photos in this location.
That was super helpful on the day of, because I had spent a lot of time during their engagement session walking around this big downtown/lakefront area trying to find the best spots.
A lot of that walking wasn’t practical, but on their wedding day I knew exactly where to go, which was to head to a fountain in between several buildings directly west of harbor park.
We took photos at the fountain and then I noticed this beautiful symmetrical walkway leading from the fountain all the way to the park and th elake. There were trees lined on either side and the light was beautiful.
We took the rest of our photos here and in the park and even on the rocks lining the lake. It was perfect.
Here I also want to mention Ashley and Matt’s great energy and their friendship. These two are very down-to-earth and friendly unpretentious people. They also like to have fun together. So even though they took posing directions really well, I also wanted them to do their own thing and make the pictures their own.
So, I asked Matt to just have fun and then he started to play around, picking Ashley up, wrapping his arms around her, grabbing her arms and putting them around him and just generally being the affectionate fun-loving guy he is all the time.
This general vibe resulted in my favorite pose of theses two, which was them walking down the street with Ashley’s arm over Matt’s shoulders like they’re movie stars and on the cover of a romantic baseball comedy like Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham.
Hiring a photographer for the whole day!
One other important detail about Ashley and Matt’s wedding was that they loved photos and hired me to be there all day and I mean all day. It was a 12-hour day for us, 11 am to 11 pm.
If you’re wondering why in the world you would want your photographer there for that long there are some positives that come from that.
The first is that you don’t have to tweak or change your schedule just to make sure you get all those “photographable moments” in the time window that I’m present, whether that’s a short six hour day or a more standard eight hour day.
The other thing is that if you want to do a last dance of the day or a wedding send off, like Ashley and Matt then I’ll be there for that and I can photograph that final beautiful moment of your day.
