With the recent sad news of the closure of La Palapa in Long Beach, CA we recall a promotion that Caught in the Moment Photography ran in 2008 exactly on the day that same sex marriages became legal in the state of California.  On that day in June, we teamed up with Great Officiants a Long Beach, CA based company of wedding officiants that caters to all couples regardless of whether they are same sex or otherwise and the aforementioned La Palapa, a restaurant and event venue that was able to offer weddings and special events on the beach.

Although Caught in the Moment Photography has several photographers and are thus able to photograph multiple events, including weddings, in a day; we have never photograph as many weddings in a single day as we did that day.  The promotion consisted of our photographers photographing the entire wedding procedures, from ceremony to the actual signing of the marriage license to the formal portraits at the wedding ceremony location free of charge.  We then posted all of the images at our site CaughtintheMoment.com and made them available for purchase there, but if all the couples wanted to do was share our site with friends and relatives so that they could see the happy occasion then that was just fine with us.  We were just happy to be able to participate in such a historic occasion and in the process make a few people happy with the fact that they did not need to hire a photographer to be there to document the special event.

Although the event space is no longer available for beachside weddings, our good friends at Great Officiants now offer that very option on their own.  In fact their business has grown to include many different officiants to cater to the specific cultural backgrounds and preferences of each couple.  It gives us great pleasure to partner with wedding vendors that are friendly and open to the way couples love, whether it’s same sex wedding couples or multicultural or multiethnic or whatever!