If you’ve never been to the Japanese Friendship Gardens, in Phoenix, AZ, you should plan to make a visit. It’s a quiet, peaceful little garden tucked away in the city. If you didn’t know it was there, you could easily miss it. It’s a beautiful green space, and was Corinne and Ben’s Phoenix Japanese Garden wedding.

I typically don’t like to shoot large, elaborate weddings. I’ve found that I enjoy smaller, more intimate events, and capturing the celebration of the couple’s love story, and exchanging of vows while they celebrate with their loved ones. This isn’t a knock on larger weddings, it’s just that for now I’ve found what I enjoy shooting. 

Corinne and Ben planned to have their ceremony with their family at the Courthouse in Phoenix, and then do their bridal portraits at the Japanese Gardens after. We reserved the gardens for our session for one hour, and had the entire place to ourselves. It was perfect, and matched their personalities perfectly. They had to adjust their timing of their session and their courthouse ceremony as the courthouse schedule changed, so we were on a time crunch.

We started with group shots of the entire family, and did some traditional posed shots and group shots together. This was the perfect time to do them while everyone was together and ready to shoot. After we finished with the family members, they were free to go, and we snuck off to the rest of the garden for some bride and groom portraits. 

We worked around the bright early afternoon sun (the only time we could shoot due to the Courthouse schedule), but we still found some great shaded spots to shoot, and get some beautiful bridal portraits. Check out the gallery below for some photos from their bridal session.