As a wedding photographer for elegant and often international couples, I'm convinced that a civil wedding at Stadhuis Rotterdam never goes out of style. Lale and Brandonn’s intimate celebration inside the historic city hall chambers was a beautiful mix of modern romance, multicultural traditions and timeless style. Despite the rain, we captured some of my absolute favorite portraits in the iconic inner courtyard.
Some weddings happen in places that feel like they were built for exactly this. The Rotterdam city hall is one of them — grand stone corridors, a courtyard wrapped in ivy, a fountain that doesn't care whether it's raining or not. On this particular day, it was.
Nobody minded.
Lale and Brandonn said yes to each other in front of the people they love most — a small group that between them represented the Netherlands, Colombia, and Azerbaijan. Their friend stood up front and officiated, which meant that the words spoken that day weren't borrowed from a script. They were written for these two specifically.
The nerves were visible, and they were sweet. The kind that come not from doubt but from the weight of the moment — from understanding exactly what you're doing when you say it out loud in front of everyone.
On Lale's hands, still fading from a henna celebration a few days before, was the mark of one tradition carried into another. A small, quiet detail that held a lot of history.
When they walked out into the courtyard after, umbrella in hand, the rain was just weather.
