French Quarter Elopement During the Covid-19 Pandemic

As we all know, this Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenging time for everyone. Whether you’re an essential employee or a photographer such as myself, you’re feeling the effects of this crisis. Being a photographer in New Orleans, I definitely haven’t been immune to how this effecting business. People are having to cancel or postpone their bigger weddings and events which sends ripples through our industry. Being that I was just married a few months ago, I couldn’t imagine all the plans for our wedding having a wrench thrown into them. It has been devastating for some couples, others are choosing alternative means of expressing their love and trying to make the best of the situation presented to them. Which brings me to Shekema and Kevon’s wedding I had the pleasure of covering a little over a week ago.

They were one of the couples whose wedding was effected by the pandemic. Their original wedding plans included about 150 guests in New Orleans. But wanting to keep their date of 4-4-2020 they decided to have a small elopement and postpone their big and more formal wedding to a later date.

I was a little apprehensive about shooting a wedding at this time but I decided that I would shoot most of everything with a telephoto lens and stick to social distancing guidelines. There was less than 10 people in attendance for the ceremony including myself and they had masks and gloves available for everyone to wear. Since the location of their small ceremony was very close to Bourbon St., I thought that this would be a rare opportunity to do some photos of them there with no other distractions.

This was my first elopement since moving to New Orleans and it was such a treat having the French Quarter as the backdrop to these photos. There’s so much to appreciate and we had a myriad of options to work with on a our short walk through that part of the city. Having a completely lovely couple to work with made the day amazingly stress free and go by quick.

I love when the couples I work with have a great sense of humor. Shekema and Kevon wanted to incorporate their masks and gloves into a few of the shots before we were done for the day. They were completely adapting to their situation and having a great time with it and I think we captured some truly memorable moments for them to cherish for a long time to come.