I have been photographing Rebecca’s family longer than I have photographed most families. It started with a family member’s wedding. Then her father’s company, Cops Monitoring, brought me in for their holiday party, and I have been shooting that party ever since. More than ten years of it, and I am still the one who shows up. So when Rebecca and Matt got engaged, the call was not really a question.
Lucien’s Manor sits on the White Horse Pike in Berlin, New Jersey. If you are looking at Lucien’s Manor for your own wedding, this is the kind of day it can be.
It Started in Wildwood
Rebecca and Matt met in Wildwood, at one of the spots down there everybody has a story about. So that is where we did the engagement session. Not because the beach photographs well, though it does, but because it was theirs.
We shot it on film, a Contax 645 loaded with Portra 400. We also ended the session with silly string and a run straight into the ocean, which tells you most of what you need to know about these two. You can see the whole Wildwood engagement session here.
They turned that session into an album, and then they used the album as the signing book at the wedding. Guests wrote in the margins of the pictures from the day they got engaged. I have seen a lot of guest books. That one I still remember.
Two Houses, Two Mornings
Rebecca got ready at her parents’ house. Matt got ready at his. Both of them in the homes they grew up in, with the people who raised them, in rooms that already meant something before anybody hung a dress on the door. You cannot stage that later.
It also means the morning happens in two places at the same time, so we split up and covered both houses.
First Look at Berlin Park
Berlin Park is a Camden County park a few minutes up the same road as the venue. We did the first look there and stayed for the wedding party photographs.
Having a real park that close to the venue quietly solves the hardest part of a wedding timeline. No shuttle, no traffic window, no math about how long the drive back takes. You go, you shoot, you are back.
They Built a Ceremony Room That Did Not Exist
This is the part I still bring up.
Lucien’s has more than one room, and Rebecca and Matt took over one that does not normally host ceremonies. Then they built inside it. White pedestals ran down both sides of the aisle, each one carrying a tall twisted branch wrapped in ribbon and coral orchids, and above each pedestal hung a canopy of crystal strands falling most of the way to the floor. The whole room went pink under the chandelier. White runner, rose petals, drape behind the altar.
I have shot a lot of ceremonies. Most of them look like the venue they happened in, and that is fine, that is what a venue is for. This one did not. The photographs do not look like Lucien’s, and they do not look like anywhere else either. That was the whole point, and they pulled it off.
The Shore Snuck Into Berlin
They met in Wildwood. We shot their engagement session in Wildwood. And then, without making a theme out of it, the shore turned up in a ballroom twenty five miles inland.
Their escort cards were seashells. Not shell shaped paper, actual shells, each one hand lettered, laid out in a tray of real sand on a lit table with starfish and conchs around it. Above it they hung a piece of driftwood strung with orchids and Spanish moss, backlit in that exact green blue you only get looking at water.
Cocktail hour had a steel drum duo playing under a pair of palm trees strung with lights. Nobody announced any of this. You just walked in and it was there.
They Did It Again to the Ballroom
Here is what I did not expect. They did not spend the whole build on the ceremony and coast through the reception. They rigged the main ballroom ceiling too.
Sheer white fabric swagged corner to corner across the entire room on truss, and hanging down from it, hundreds of white ribbons, each one weighted with a crystal at the end. It hung right over the dance floor. Every wide shot from that night has it in the frame, and every first dance frame has it overhead.
More than 200 guests underneath. Gold chairs, tall white arrangements, the venue’s own gold columns and chandeliers still doing their part behind all of it.
The Dance Floor
It went off early and it stayed off. Nobody had to be talked into anything, nobody drifted toward the door at nine. That is usually a sign the couple invited the right people rather than the obligated ones.
Why Lucien’s Manor Works
Lucien’s gives you more than one room, so your ceremony space and your reception space do not have to be the same four walls turned around during cocktail hour. If you want to build something, there is room to build it, and the ceilings are high enough to hang from.
Berlin Park is up the road, so portraits do not cost you an hour of your own reception.
And the staff let Rebecca and Matt do something ambitious with a room instead of handing them a list of what is not allowed. Lucien’s is one of the South Jersey venues I shoot regularly, and it is on the short list I hand couples who want a room they can actually change.
Ready to Start Planning?
If you are looking at Lucien’s Manor, or anywhere else in South Jersey, I would love to hear what you are planning. I am a New Jersey wedding photographer and I take a limited number of weddings each year. Reach out here and let’s talk through what your day could look like.
Vendor Team
Venue: Lucien’s Manor, Berlin, New Jersey
Photography: Jordan Brian Studios
Florals and Planning: Mae & Co. Productions
DJ: Asharp Productions
Officiant: Pastor Glenn Conaway
Portrait location: Berlin Park, Berlin, New Jersey