A Botanical Gardens Wedding in Niagara Falls: Karen + Micheal

Karen and Micheal got married in front of a fish.

I want to be clear that this is a compliment. The fish is a living sculpture at the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens, planted head to tail in green foliage, with fins and gills and one round orange eye, and it stands about twice the height of a person. Their guests sat in white folding chairs on the gravel path in front of it. There was no arch, no draping, no aisle runner. It was one of the best ceremonies we photographed this year.

If you have been trying to picture what a small outdoor wedding in Niagara actually looks like, here is a whole day of one.

A garden instead of a ballroom

The Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens sit on the Niagara Parkway about ten minutes north of the Falls. Ninety nine acres of formal gardens, run as the teaching campus of the Niagara Parks School of Horticulture since 1936, which is why every hedge on the property is cut like it is being marked.

Karen and Micheal used it the way we wish more couples would. One location for most of the day. No convoy between venues, no forty minutes lost to Parkway traffic in wedding clothes, no getting changed in a church basement.

The morning was quiet. Glass doors and shade at the conservatory entrance, a bridesmaid pinning a veil that ran past Karen’s elbows, blush pink roses waiting on a chair. There is a frame of Karen looking down at that bouquet with nothing happening in it at all. Just a person a few minutes away from doing something enormous.

Out on the lawn, the rings were sitting on two lace pillows in the grass next to a long white feather. That feather turns out to matter later.

The ceremony

Around thirty five people. Two short blocks of white chairs either side of a gravel aisle, and the garden doing all of the decorating. Their officiant read from a folder in one hand, wearing sunglasses, because it was that kind of bright July morning.

The best ceremonies usually have the least production in them. The fish was the altar. Beds of deep red heather ran along the base of it, evergreens stacked up behind, and everything else in the frame was just trees.

The wind helped. Karen’s veil lifted twice on the walk in and once more at the altar, and those are the frames from the ceremony I keep coming back to.

Then the recessional, and Micheal threw one arm straight up in the air like his team had scored. The front row went up with him. Half the guests were clapping and the other half were filming on their phones and Karen was laughing so hard she had to gather the dress to keep walking.

The quill

The signing happened outdoors, at a white draped table a few steps off the aisle. The pen was the long white feather from the ring pillows.

It is a small thing and it made the whole set. There is something about watching two people sign a legal document with a feather, in a public garden, in front of their friends, that captures exactly how this day felt. Formal about the part that actually matters. Relaxed about all the rest of it.

There is also a frame from that table of sunlight coming through Karen’s ring and throwing a small bright shape across the register. Nobody saw it happen except the camera.

The people

Everyone came into the frame after that. Family under the willow with a toddler on somebody’s hip. Karen’s mother between the two of them. Then four of Micheal’s friends lined up and gave the camera four sets of thumbs up, which is not a pose we asked for and not one we would ever cut.

This is the part of a small wedding a big wedding cannot buy. Nobody was queued up waiting for a turn. There was no reception clock to protect. People just stood around in a garden with the couple for as long as they felt like standing there.

Portraits in the gardens

Then we walked, and the gardens opened up fast.

The arboretum is the largest part of the property and it is mostly mature trees, mown grass and long paved walks. Hard July sun on the way in, and then these deep green tunnels of shade with light coming through the top of the canopy.

Karen’s gown needed about a metre of clearance in every direction, which sounds like a problem and is actually a gift. Every time she turned, the lace moved a beat behind her.

There is one frame of her alone on the path with the train fanned across the gravel and the light coming through from behind, and it is the most editorial picture from the day. It is also the cover of their gallery.

The Falls

The last chapter moved down the Parkway to the wall above the gorge, near Queen Victoria Park.

Completely different photographs. Stone balustrade, wrought iron scrollwork, black lamp posts, and behind all of it the mist coming up off Horseshoe Falls with the Fallsview towers stacked in the haze. Fifteen minutes from the gardens, and the gallery picks up a second register: wide, bright and unmistakably Niagara.

The last frame is the two of them sitting on the grass with their backs to us, facing the gorge, the dress spread out across the lawn, the mist rising in front of them. Nobody is looking at the camera. It should be the last frame.

If you are planning something like this

Niagara is a two hour drive from Toronto and most couples in the GTA never consider it for a wedding, which is exactly why it works. The gardens are free to walk into and you do not need a permit to take wedding photographs there. Holding your ceremony on the property is a separate booking through Niagara Parks.

We wrote a full photographer’s guide to the place, including the permit question, the parking, the best gardens and the best months to come: Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens wedding photos.

See the full gallery

The full fifty image gallery from Karen and Micheal’s wedding lives on our portfolio: Karen + Micheal at the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens.

If you are planning an intimate wedding in Niagara, or anywhere in the GTA, reach out here. We always start with a conversation about your day, your people, and the moments you actually want to remember.