Kristen and I went to fourth through eighth grade together in Montgomery, Alabama.  We were in  advanced classes in middle school called 'plus' classes, or as I later deemed us "The Nerd Herd."  We had all our middle school classes with the same 12-15 kids.  ALL OF THEM.  You can imagine how this limits your social horizons-- but we were focused on getting all A's so we didn't think much of it.  I moved to Atlanta for my Freshman year in High School and Kristen and I went our separate ways until I literally RAN into her on mile four of the Atlanta Half-Marathon in 2000. Kristen is about 5'11" and let's just say, I ran my best time ever 1:45 (I have got to dig up that finish line photo- I look like death warmed over and Kristen looks gorgeous and she didn't break a sweat).  We re-connected and have been friends ever since.  When she told me about her wedding, I was thinking, " I HAVE to photograph this," but she was thinking she didn't want me working at her wedding.  We struck up a deal and I ended up shooting it.  Turns out in the year or so of planning Kristen and Billy had what one might call an EPIC year.  Bill's career "took off" to put it mildly, as he won a Tony and a Grammy for the Orchestration of In The Heights, which also won three OTHER Tony awards, including Best Musical.  Kristen, in the meantime, is finishing up her doctorate degree and planning to defend her dissertation this year and has already received two job offers in THIS market.  Not bad, oh yeah, in the middle of all that they got engaged, and planned a 350 guest wedding in Times Square on the set of In The Heights.  See their announcement in the New York Times and check out this video too.

Jamelle and I had the great honor of standing on a Broadway stage, and since both of us are closet Broadway-aholics, it was fantastic to meet the backstage crew, the theater managers, the lighting director (shout out to Chris Kurtz, who made the lighting for this wedding amazing), and actually see the show on Saturday night.  We HIGHLY recommend it. 

Since their good friends with the cast of In The Heights (aka college buddies) their wedding reception was appropriately so, filled with singing toasts, raps and an amazing band and late night DJ.  They focused on the party rather than the details and that's really Kristen and Billy's style.  The singing toasts we're hilarious and some of the best I've seen. 

I am having a hard time editing this blog post down to less than 25 photos.  That is a good sign. Click through the thumbnails to see the other images... see next blog post for the slideshow, which until Friday you can just view within this blog. I still have yet to post all the proofs to a gallery-site where guests can order photos to their hearts delight.  Stay tuned because Kristen will send out an email to all the wedding family and guests when the images are loaded and ready to order.