Tyler and Laura met on the dating app, Bumble, when she came across a picture of him running at Haverford College.

“I ran track as an undergraduate, and likely ran in the same race where the picture was taken,” she wrote to photographer Tricia Notte, filling her in on the couple’s backstory. “On our first date, we realized that we had multiple connections, including the fact that he used to work a summer job for my dad. We became inseparable pretty soon after that.”

The couple got engaged in February of 2019, and the time leading up to the wedding, according to Laura, was fairly stressful. “Tyler is a pilot in the Army National Guard and just started intensive training to also fly for a regional airline,” she continued. “He was away most of the three months leading up to the wedding, and made it back only two days before the ceremony. We are so grateful to have had a wedding where all of our friends and family could be gathered together, especially since Tyler is deploying with the Army this upcoming August. We ultimately settled on a New Year’s Eve wedding after encouragement from our friends and family. We could not have imagined a better way to start off the New Year than as newlyweds.”

Says photographer Notte: “I love this image because I just wasn’t sure if it was going to work. Could I try and get Laura and Tyler into an area and other rowdy NYE celebrators out of the way? Would the lighting and flash work in the way I wanted it to? I felt unsure about how it would turn out and it felt risky so I felt incredibly stoked when it worked! Sometimes as a photographer we have to trust ourselves and take risks, which can be scary. Although I told Tyler and Laura to stand around a certain area everything else in the image was completely authentic.”

(Photographed with a Nikon 810, 35mm lens, Godox Witstro AD600/AD600B, Nikon SB 910 flash.)

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