Courtney and Matt didn’t get the wedding portraits they wanted due to some pretty serious extenuating circumstances. If you missed our blog post about Rocking your Wedding Day in a Wheelchair, check it out now! We were originally scheduled to do a day-after portrait session with Courtney and Matt, but that was obviously cancelled. After she was healed, we asked the couple if they’d still like to do a session sometime, especially since we really only took one portrait of the two of them on the actual wedding day. Courtney had this gorgeous flowing wedding gown with a long train that she never had the chance to show off. She described a fun idea of getting dressed back up in their wedding attire and basically bar hopping post-wedding to some of their favorite local spots in Wilmington alongside family and friends. So that’s what we did!

Starting the Day Strong at Jimmy’s

We began our day of wedding celebration bar hopping at Jimmy’s in Wrightsville Beach. This is one of Courtney and Matt’s favorite dive bars with alcoholic slushies and dollar bills on the ceiling. As friends and family continued to walk through the door, it was like the wedding celebrating Courtney and Matt never had. Of course, they gathered lots of attention from other bar patrons, but that also meant that they had many drinks bought for them. They even got the chance to write their wedding date on a dollar bill and Matt lifted Courtney up to the ceiling to place it right above the bar!

Bar Hopping in Downtown Wilmington

After Jimmy’s, we all hopped in Courtney’s moms’ van and headed to the next stop on our bar crawl: Barbary Coast. Here, we took some creative portraits that were mildly more serious… as serious as Courtney and Matt could get at least. You’ll notice throughout this set that Courtney and Matt seem to get sillier and sillier. Maybe it was the alcohol, but it’s also just a part of who they are! They are fun-loving, positive people who don’t take life too seriously. Matt in particular isn’t a huge fan of having his photo taken, but he was a good sport about the whole thing. His only demand was that he would be allowed to wear his camo Crocs with socks all day! 😛

Wrapping up the Bar Crawl

After a long day of post-wedding bar hopping, the sun began to set and we took Courtney up to the top of a pretty iconic downtown Wilmington parking garage for some portraits. Interestingly, we had somehow lost Matt and most of the guys between the last few bars and he didn’t have his phone on him. Luckily, he found us eventually and we got just a few serious portraits before the real personalities came out. You really do gotta love these two!

After the photos were done, we ended the night at Flytrap Brewing and we celebrated, now off-the-clock, with Courtney and Matt over a few beers. Of course, we couldn’t not document the moment when the Courtney and Matt began slow dancing in front of the live band, making up for their less than perfect first dance on their wedding night.