Now their meeting story was a surprise to Cayla and I am totally stealing her version of it!!

Ben and I met on the beach; however, he knew of me long before I knew anything about him (creepy? Maybe). Lets just say that there was a codename for me so he could communicate to other police officers about where I was during my boardwalk runs. Heck, Ben even asked me about my black dog the first time I ever met him…weird, right? I was better known to the police officers as “BeastMode,” and I didn’t even find out about this until months later.

During the summer, I work as a Lieutenant for the oceanfront lifeguards. I was called down to the 15th street pier for a drunk guy who was causing problems because he apparently had a couple of kids with him. When I got there, my good friend Emily gave me a quick rundown of what was going on: this dude had been drinking all day, was watching his niece and nephew, tried getting into the water completely wasted and was being extremely belligerent towards the lifeguards. So, there I was with three police officers, a drunk guy and two kids. I noticed that the officers were pretty tied up with trying to figure out what was going on with this guy, so I kept the kids busy down by the water. Not long after, this super tall, dark and handsome officer walks down towards me. This is going to sound totally cliche and lame, but I kid you not, I was immediately attracted to Ben…so much so that I immediately went back to Emily to tell her how cute and dreamy he was and that he was probably a total jerk haha. He had this quiet confidence about him, a pretty alright smile, and was halfway decent at his job too…even though he was spending the majority of this case with me ;).

As the summer went on, my encounters with Ben kept occurring…he always seemed to be the officer coming to help me with different calls on the beach. However, one call completely unrelated to work involved my friend Emily and me. She’s known for locking herself out of her vehicle…so I decided this was the perfect time to get Ben to come save the day. One of my off-duty cop friends sent me his number so that I could ask him for help. Welp, I called him. But, the conversation went a little different from I had imagined. With a nervous voice, he muttered the words, “You’re a firefighter, don’t you know what to do?” Needless to say, I will give him a hard time about that for the rest of our lives. 

Their dreamed about day took place at The Historic Post Office is Hampton which has hands down the best bridal suite in the area!! So much space! This isn’t my first wedding here and I love to always have fresh eyes for each wedding so we did some new things in this space for getting ready pictures and I am LOVING how they turned out!!!

Since these two chose to not do a first look we worked a prayer into the day right before the ceremony started. During this Ben gave Cayla a necklace with the coordinates of the beach they met on!! Their ceremony was so sweet with personalized vows and lots of tears. Cayla wrote hers on a parking ticket Ben left and Ben reared up through his, no doubt he’s waiting a long time to say those words!

The light was perfect for portraits afterwards while guests enjoyed the outdoor cocktail hour (my first time seeing one at this venue!!) Since I’ve followed the planning on Instagram I knew it was important to capture all the details Cayla and her mom and friends had worked so so long and hard on!! Personalized signs, ceremony decor, signs with their wedding hashtag, don’t bar and sangria bar signs, SO much hard work that turned out beautifully!!

Here’s the thing, Cayla told me that since this was a heavy firefighter (Caylas one career!) and police (Ben’s career) reception there would be a lot of dancing and partying. Well she did not disappoint!! Thanks to Roger from Astro dj and the awesome guests the dance floor stayed packed just up until the exit!! So many people who have loved and prayed for this day celebrated with Cayla and Ben making it that much more special.