Backyard Chatham Wedding // Katina & Paul

Katina Tsongas and Paul O’Keefe were married on a gorgeous September day in Chatham, MA.  Friends in town allowed them to hold their ceremony at a private park on Old Salt Works Road and the beautiful tented reception was held on the lawn at the Tsongas’s summer home.

Shortly after I arrived to photograph Katina getting ready, she teared up after opening a gift from her soon to be husband, Paul.  One of her nieces asked her why she was crying.  Looking very concerned she asked, “You’re still going to marry my Uncle Paul, right?”  Katina and her bridesmaids assured her that she was, and that they were just “happy tears.”

Katina and Paul chose a reading that I hope to continue to hear at weddings.  While the Corinthians “Love is patient, love is kind” is quite popular on the wedding circuit, they chose to read Justice Kennedy’s closing statement from the recent Supreme Court gay marriage decision:

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.  In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.  As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.  It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.  Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.  Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions.  They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.  The Constitution grants them that right.  The judgement of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is revered.  It is so ordered.”

Congratulations Katina and Paul!