Tessa And Josh's Romantic Hewing Hotel Wedding In Minneapolis / May 1, 2024 by Bradley Hanson

I regularly photograph weddings at the Hewing Hotel. In fact, I photographed the first wedding ever held at the Hewing Hotel, so I am intimately familiar with all of its secrets.

Tessa and Josh were effortlessly fun and affectionate. It was easy to blend into the background at their wedding and take on my favorite role as silent observer.

From Tessa: “We met on Bumble in 2021, our first date was at Colita and we just kept ordering more and more plates of food so the date would never end. We were so stuffed! We sat at the bar and our legs touched the whole date. Our joke is that our legs touched first date so we knew we’d be together forever. We had our one month and one year anniversaries at the Hewing Hotel. We got engaged on the rooftop last year, and our wedding was the third anniversary of our very first date at Colita.”

Tessa getting ready at the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis

tessa with her wedding flowers at the hewing hotel in minneapolis

Josh first look with Tessa at the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis

Custom suit from Heimies Haberdashery at the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis

Tessa and Josh portrait at the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis

Fixing the dress at the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis

Bride and groom on the roof of the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis MN

dancing on the roof of the hewing hotel in minneapolis

I am a Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota based wedding photographer, specializing in documentary style weddings, elopements, and Indian/Hindu weddings all over the world. To see more of my wedding work, click the wedding galleries under the portfolio heading.

To inquire about my rates and availability, call me at 206-393-8292, email me at bradley@bradleyhanson.com or fill out the contact form (click the “contact” link on the top right of the page).

If you want to follow me on Instagram, I have two accounts: @bradleyhanson is my personal one, all square images from my iPhone since 2008, and @bradleyhansonphotography is my professional portfolio, a mix of weddings, family and portraits, as well as black and white and color landscape images. If you are still reading this far, you’ve already figured out how to find my website…

Downtown Minneapolis Snowy Wedding In The Historic Lumber Exchange Building / March 17, 2019 by Bradley Hanson

Illyas walks out on the roof of the Lumber Exchange Building as the snowstorm begins on March 9, 2019.

I’ve been photographing weddings for 20 years now. I’ve personally been to 600 of them. Yeah, I know. It’s gone by quickly since April 1999. Anyway, 13 years of that was in Seattle, the last 7 here in Minneapolis. As someone who grew up in Minneapolis, the feeling is often that there is snow on the ground 6 months of the year. It can start as early as October and it can happen as late is May. We don’t get the kind of heavy snow we used to get all winter when I was a kid, but we are getting wild extremes. This year, we had a bone dry December, then February was 40 inches of snow rather than the average of 7.

Snow gets old when you grow up with it, but it still has a magical quality to me, particularly the first snow of the year. There is a quiet and peacefulness that happens both from the visual minimalism and the sound deadening of the snow itself. It literally absorbs sound and the combination enhances the beauty.

When Anna and Illyas hired me to photograph portraits for them, it was a relatively humid day. They had just gotten a sweet little dog named Louie who didn’t want to be away from them during our time together.

Fast forward to a week ago. The wedding day, March 9th, came quickly and meteorologists forecasted a late winter storm of 8-10” in the Twin Cities. I was excited because I could finally take photographs of a bride and groom in the snow. Well, the serious part of the storm ended up hitting the part of the state south of Minneapolis and while we ended up with more like 5 inches of snow, it was beautiful: large, heavy and dense snow that fell slowly and accumulated quickly.

In a brief moment after the wedding ceremony, Anna, Illyas and I went to the roof of the historic Lumber Exchange Building to take a few photographs it was the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I rarely use flash, but with snow it highlights every flake on its way to the ground.

I’ll be adding images to this blog post in a few weeks.

WPJA Wedding Photojournalist Association Contest Winning Images / February 19, 2019 by Bradley Hanson

These were four recent winning images in the WPJA (Wedding Photojournalist Association) wedding contest. It is open to photographers from all over the world, not just wedding photographers from Minneapolis.

There is some continuity between thematic elements in the photographs in that two of the three are backlit and all three contain scenes that were photographed entirely as found, rather than directing the action, which is my preferred method of working. The color scene was the bride and groom’s first dance, in the unusual twist of being outside at one of my favorite wedding venues near Minneapolis, the Camrose Hill Flower Farm in Stillwater, MN.

You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, VSCO, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn through the links on the upper right.

To see more Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN portraits, wedding photography and weddings all over the world, visit my main portfolio on bradleyhanson.com or email me at info@bradleyhanson.com or call me at 206-393-8292 and we can discuss your wedding plans in detail. My speciality is shooting family portraits in an unposed, natural style and wedding photojournalism. I photograph weddings as they happen rather than direct the action, which is often referred to as documentary style wedding photography. I’ve photographed weddings in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Seattle and many countries around the world.