(Before I start this post, let me reiterate something: I DO NOT PHOTOGRAPH WEDDINGS. This was a very special exception for two very good friends. If you ask me to photograph your wedding, I will say no. Save yourself the crushing disappointment by finding another photographer.)

Remember those engagement photos featuring Mike, Bethany, and Mike’s beard? Well, as often happens at the end of an engagement, Mike and Bethany got married. To celebrate the occasion, I showed up with my camera to get a few photos.

They got married on the beach at Somerset Beach Campground, where Bethany had been working for several years and where they’d met. What do beaches have? Beaches have sand.

Before the guests started arriving, we took a couple minutes to get a few photos.

You may have noticed that Mike has abundant hair on his face, while Bethany has abundant hair on her head. If that’s not the sign of a perfect match, I don’t know what is.

The following photo may be my favorite of the bunch.

Before long, the ceremony started. Mike was waiting off to the side with an outstandingly beardy set of groomsmen. (This was one of the many benefits of having a motorcycle club involved in the ceremony.)

What was he waiting for? He was waiting for this:

Mike was glad to be done with all that waiting.

With an outdoor wedding there’s always a risk that it’ll be cold or rainy or tornadoey or Floridaey or something, but Mike and Bethany managed to pick one of the most perfect days of the entire month.

Seriously: not only was it not overcast or rainy, but it wasn’t even cold. In fact, it was just warm enough to be t-shirt weather. (This may have been why I was wearing a t-shirt.)

Bethany’s flower girl was her niece. Though the wedding was reasonably short, her niece decided it was long enough that she needed to find some entertainment. Fortunately, the sand provided plenty of entertainment — and a good photo opportunity:

One of the more inexplicable wedding traditions is the unity candle. I guess it’s appealing if you’re a big fan of fire or if the room is cold or something — though in both cases it should be a unity bonfire — but like most wedding customs, it’s not really a good use of everybody’s time. Seriously, people: it takes ten seconds to light a candle. Pairing a ten-second ceremony with a three-minute song is monumentally inefficient and serves only to make everybody uncomfortable as you whisper sweet nothings to each other for two minutes and fifty seconds.

Anyway: when planning their wedding day, Mike and Bethany did many, many things right. One such thing was to dump the unity candle in favor of a sand ceremony. They had small containers of two colors of sand…

…and in a sequence that lasted much longer than ten seconds, they filled one larger container with layers of the sand:

This ceremony provided them with something that looks nice enough to display. What does a unity candle provide you with? A partially-burned candle. I mean, seriously…do people ever really think about wedding traditions? Is a ceremony that partially destroys an object preferable to one that creates an attractive decoration? Enough with the candles. If you’re going to have a wedding, try to be more like Mike and Bethany.

The wedding ended successfully: Mike and Bethany ended up married. And there was much congratulating.

When the congratulating was done, Mike and Bethany signed the government’s version of the unity candle sand.

This marked the first time Bethany had officially signed her new name.

Yes, she spelled it right, wise guy.

One of the other things Mike and Bethany did right was to separate the wedding and reception: they had a small wedding on Friday, and they had a larger reception on Sunday. I didn’t have my camera out during the reception, but I had it ready when they were leaving.

Because they were leaving on a motorcycle, it was neither practical nor wise for Bethany to wear her wedding dress for their exit. She had another outfit for that occasion.

She was happy to be married.

Before they roared off into the…uh, afternoon sun, they paused for a few more photos.

Yes, that’s my shadow in the bottom left. That’s how you know I was there. Well, that and all these photos.

Ah, but wait: it wasn’t just Mike and Bethany roaring off into the afternoon sun! They were accompanied by a dozen or so members of the motorcycle club.

This was by far the best wedding reception exit I’d ever seen (and heard). A limo? Eh. A classic car? Okay. A tractor? Not bad. A horse and buggy? Also not bad. But a bunch of motorcycles? OH YEAH.

And that, as they say, is that. Hearty congratulations to Mike and Bethany.