Wedding Photography at La Abadía de los Templarios
I have always been very wary of telling someone I love you. Why? They are only three words. Yes, but they are three words that have, or should have, a very powerful meaning. That is why sometimes it has taken me weeks to work up the courage to say them for the first time. I have only said them when I truly meant them. Even when I have felt them deeply, I have tried not to overuse those words, so they would not lose the value they held at first. In fact, although I am rather soppy these days and tell her every day, I remember that at the beginning Eliška would occasionally give me a hard time about it. But… is it more important to say I love you or to show it? Quike and Elena made that very clear to me during their wedding at La Abadía de los Templarios.
I do not think I have ever heard those words come out of Quike’s or Elena’s mouths. But if I have decided to talk about this right above their wedding photographs, it is because of what they have shown me.
I met Quike and Elena about two years before their wedding, at the Salamanca Congress Palace Wedding Fair. There is no second chance at a first impression, and even though everything at the fair was very rushed, the first impression they gave me could not have been better. It was one of those times when you know from the very first moment that there is love between a couple, that they are the kind of couples who get married because they want to and BECAUSE THEY LOVE EACH OTHER. But you know what impressions are like… they are nothing more than that… and although sometimes you can be wrong… this was not, by any stretch, one of those cases. By the time it was time for their pre-wedding shoot, I already knew them perfectly.
We met only a couple of times before that shoot… but, as usual, the last time got away from us and we ended up closing down a café. Yes, I have closed many night-time bars… but I never thought I would close a café after midnight. With my first impression confirmed, and without the slightest doubt, their pre-wedding shoot arrived. Then came the wedding, which you have below these lines, and finally an epic post-wedding shoot with Star Wars overtones. In every one of these sessions I saw time and again how words are not everything. How some looks express pure love, and how some silences say far more than a thousand declarations of love.
Quike and Elena chose La Abadía de los Templarios for their wedding celebration. More precisely, they chose the viewpoint at La Abadía de los Templarios as the place to say “I do.” Theirs was one of those ceremonies that leave you speechless. And no, it was not because of all the beautiful words and anecdotes shared that afternoon… but because of everything that was not said, or not heard, but felt.
I still remember perfectly the moment they saw each other for the first time during the ceremony. There were about twenty metres between them, and I was standing between the two of them. Although I could not hear him, I could read Quike’s lips as he quickly and nervously repeated to his mother: “Elena looks beautiful, Elena looks beautiful, Elena looks beautiful” while squeezing her hand tightly. Those eyes, that confusion on their lips as they cannot decide whether to smile or prepare to cry, that is love—the good kind, the real kind. What do you think the moments before their eyes met were like? And the ones afterwards? I have put together a brief summary so you can see that I am not exaggerating, that I have not said anything the photographs of their wedding cannot back up. Because in the end, that is what I am looking for: to make photographs that speak for themselves… and Quike and Elena’s wedding photographs… have a LOT to say…
Thank you, Quike and Elena, for letting me share this love story from another galaxy with the world… and although this is not an IMAX cinema… I hope you enjoy it!
P.S.: Look at what I ended up like after the wedding… 😍
Hair and makeup: Noelia Yañez
