Melanie and Keith got married this past March and it was just an all around lovely day — as is generally the case when two high-school sweethearts get married.

For starters, Melanie got ready for her wedding day in a friend’s house with lots of natural light and a lot of character. I LOVE photographing details and prep shots in places like this.

I thought Melanie’s ode to her soon-to-be last name on the bottom of her shoes was so clever.

It worked best for the layout of Melanie and Keith’s day to do a first look, where we set aside a special time before starting pre-ceremony portraits for Keith and Melanie to see each other and have some private moments (with their photographers of course) together on the wedding day. If you aren’t familiar with a first look, you can read a blog post I wrote about first looks here. And you can also keep going down this post and see what that looked like for Melanie and Keith.

I giggle each and every time I see Keith’s face in this above photo — looks like he was very pleased with his bride’s wedding day look.

After they had time to soak up their first moments together on their wedding day we moved into some bride-groom portrait time with lots and lots of laughs –which just so happens to be my favorite kind of bride-groom portraits.

After bride-groom portraits the wedding party met up with us at the gardens for their photos as well.

The girls went from working it in one photo to embodying their “spirit animal” of choice in the next photo. I can honestly say this has been my one and only “spirit animal” bridesmaid’s photo . . . although I did have a group in September request to be cats in a photo . . . I’m up for whatever best shows the personalities of the group!

After the beautiful wedding ceremony at The Village Church in Denton, we all headed to TWU’s Hubbard Hall for the reception.

Melanie’s a huge squirrel fan, hence the candied nuts for the wedding favors and the furry bride and groom cake toppers.

Melanie and Keith have known each other since elementary school and had a yearbook page framed for display at the reception — SO CUTE! I seem to remember audibly “awwwwww”ing when I first saw it.

“I whip my hair back and forth . . .”

 Wonderful day. Wonderful couple. Just wonderful.