Tessa Shannon Photographer

We had the pleasure of working with Tessa as our wedding photographer and it was truly one of the best decisions we made for our big day. She captured the most authentic and beautifully candid moments that we will cherish forever. Not a single detail or moment was missed, and her ability to photograph the emotions of the day is unmatched. When we decided not to hire a videographer, we knew we needed to work with a photographer who could capture the raw, emotional moments so that we could relive the day through the photos. Tessa blew us away with what she delivered. She perfectly preserved the story of our wedding & every photo in the gallery has a piece of the atmosphere of our wedding day.

Tessa stepped in and helped with so much more throughout our wedding weekend, truly going above and beyond. Not only did she take stunning photos, but she also helped organize the bridal party, managed the timeline, and even shuttled us in her car when we needed to move from one location to another. She held on to my lipstick during the ceremony and made sure we stayed on track with all the little details that can easily get lost in the excitement of the day. Tess is someone who not only takes beautiful photos but also genuinely cares about making your wedding day experience seamless and special. We can’t recommend her enough and will treasure our photo gallery forever!

Tessa is a professional through and through and we couldn't be happier that we chose her to capture our day. She is organized, meticulous, a calming presence, and so, so discrete and agile! Looking through our photos we're stunned by some of the shots she captured all while completely blending in and never taking away from the moment.

We loved every moment of working with Tessa, we love the end result even more, and I'm already thinking of excuses to book her again. When memories fade, we'll still have Tessa's photos to look back on - and for that, I'm so grateful. Thank you, Tessa!

I truly can not recommend Tessa enough, and I can’t thank her enough either. We have been so lucky to have her shoot us for our engagement, rehearsal dinner and welcome party, wedding (!!!!), and a maternity photoshoot. The MAGIC in the photos for the wedding I can’t even explain. It took us a long time to find a photographer for our wedding that we felt was an authentic mix of different styles, not too light and airy but not too dark, modern but also feels classic, and with creativity mixed in. We looked at soooo many and when we saw Tessa’s work it was immediately obviously she was going to be perfect for us. We have had countless people comment on how incredible our photos are, and we felt so comfortable in front of the camera with her from the very first shoot. We need to keep coming up with reasons to see her now! The pictures are beautiful, creative, interesting to look at, perfectly display our emotions and we also were able to add some film in there which really was incredible. Couldn’t have asked for a better experience.

As we prepare to share our wedding photos (printed!) with family this Christmas, we want to express our long-overdue heartfelt appreciation to Tessa for capturing our wedding this past May. It’s easy to love her incredibly elevated, true-to-life, classic aesthetic, but I wanted to share high praise for these key things:

Pre-wedding: she is as meticulous as she is organized, which spoke to her professionalism and expertise. As someone who likes to stress the details, she put me completely at ease right from the beginning with her initial phone chat, and then her pre-wedding questionnaire. I was also appreciative for her willingness to answer my long list of questions along the way.

Wedding day: We had a handful of hiccups on our big day (some controllable, some uncontrollable), and Tessa really helped keep things moving and again put us at ease. When the rain came, and altered what I painstakingly envisioned our portraits session post-ceremony would be, Tessa improvised (or, likely she already had a plan), and stepped in for us in a big way—she drove us herself to our hotel. While this wasn’t what we had planned for, she was really kind and gracious to help us, and we were able to capture these adorable photos with our dog while we took a breather between our ceremony and reception.

In addition to this, at our s-medium sized 65-person wedding we really wanted to capture many group portraits with our family and guests. Tessa showed incredible patience, but also wasn’t afraid to speak up and take charge wrangling in all various members of our guest list. They are some of my most favorite photos she captured, and I’m appreciative that she was willing to do this for us.

Post-wedding: Tessa was very prompt with her sneak peeks, and her final delivery! The platform she uses is also super easy to navigate!

Advice to couples/things in hindsight we would have done differently:

We hired Tessa for 8 hours (which I think is the minimum), but 10 hours would have been better, and 12 hours would have been best. Do yourself a favor and invest more time with her so things don’t feel rushed. I would have loved to get more “editorial”/posed photos that she is known for, but looking back, we really didn’t have the time for it, specifically at the end of the night at our reception site. The day just flys by!

Tessa did a phenomenal job shooting independently, and I believe that is her preference, but with our timeline and two venue split, we do wish we had hired a second shooter. This is totally on us—she was very up front with us on what not having a second shooter meant in terms of what could be captured and delivered, so this is not something we fault her with by any means. But I do think given our circumstance, a second shooter would have been a good idea.

I want to mention that Tessa did let us know all of our options, but both of the above decisions were budgetary for us, that we just felt at the time was best to stick to. But of course, if I had a crystal ball and could go back and do it again, I would have made it work and paid more for these things. ????

Overall, we are very happy with our decision to hire Tessa, she was professional and the quality of work was exactly as expected. We love our photos, and can’t wait to finally share them with family this holiday season! We hope that we can cross paths again in the future to hire her for an anniversary couples session at some point.

Thank you, Tessa!