Earth, Ivy, and the Mulberry Tree — Gabby & Zack at Bellair Farm
Some love stories don’t begin with fireworks.
They begin with a park bench. A book. A tree. A moment that doesn’t know yet that it is the beginning of everything.
Gabby and Zack’s story started years before they realized it had.
They crossed paths in 2018 at Booker T. Washington Park in Charlottesville, ships passing in the night, sharing space, sharing friends, sharing conversation about the state of the world. Then life moved on.
Two years later, during the stillness and uncertainty of early COVID days, the universe quietly arranged the same meeting again. Same park. Same friend. Same hill. But this time, Zack was sitting beneath the ivy-covered Mulberry Tree reading Love in the Time of Cholera when he looked up and saw Gabby walking down the hill after returning from Thailand.
And this time, they stopped.
They talked. They laughed. They played music under that tree, Banana Pancakes, Gone by Jack Johnson. Songs that now feel like they were always meant to be part of their story. A first date at Biscuit Run Park followed, where deep conversation met the stillness of the woods. Two deer crossed their path during that walk, and to them, it wasn’t coincidence. It was a message. A blessing from ancestors. A quiet confirmation that they were exactly where they were meant to be.
They became a COVID pod. They became partners. They became students of herbalism together, growing gardens, studying plants, traveling to learn from herbal teachers and elders. Their love for each other grew intertwined with their love for Mother Earth, healing, and justice.
So when it came time for their wedding at Bellair Farm, they didn’t want photos that simply showed what the day looked like.
They wanted photos that felt like who they are.
A wedding woven into the land
Bellair Farm in Charlottesville is the kind of place where the earth feels present. Open fields, quiet air, and a softness that lingers over everything. From 10:30 in the morning until the late afternoon light began to mellow, the entire day felt like it was unfolding inside a living, breathing landscape.
And Gabby and Zack gave me something photographers rarely get in a wedding timeline:
Time.
Time before the ceremony.
Time after the ceremony.
Time away from guests.
Time simply to exist together in the land they love.
That time changed everything.
Zack, a former photojournalist, has spent years behind the camera creating images of Gabby. He knows what it means to observe quietly. To notice light. To wait for a moment instead of forcing one. Gabby, on the other hand, is beautifully open in front of the camera expressive, warm, completely at ease.
Together, they are a balance of shy and bold, grounded and dreamy, soulful and playful.
They didn’t want stiff poses.
They didn’t want “wedding photos.”
They wanted something earthy, magical, soulful something that would still feel full of hope, vision, and possibility twenty years from now.
And that is exactly how the day unfolded.
a kind of magic you can’t plan
After the ceremony, while guests mingled and celebrated, we slipped away. Just the four of us Gabby, Zack, myself, and the videographer climbing onto a tractor and riding out into the fields.
There was mist in the air.
Not fog. Not haze. Mist, the kind that softens edges and makes everything feel like a memory while you’re still living it.
They held each other differently out there. Slower. Quieter. Like the world had paused for them. No audience. No expectations. Just two people deeply in love with each other and with the earth beneath their feet.
Those moments on the tractor, surrounded by fields and silence, felt like stepping inside the very heart of their relationship.
What struck me most about Gabby and Zack is that their relationship is inseparable from their relationship with nature. Their gardens. Their herbal studies. Their travels to learn from elders. Their belief in healing and justice. Their reverence for the land.
You don’t photograph a couple like this by focusing only on them.
You photograph the wind.
The grass.
The light.
The air between them.
Because all of it is part of their love story.
What these photos will mean in 20 years
Gabby told me she wants to look back at these images and feel the dreaminess, the hope, and the sense of possibility they feel now, even in a challenging world.
Looking through their gallery, I know they will.
They won’t just see what they wore.
They won’t just see who attended.
They will feel:
The Mulberry Tree that started it all
The deer in the woods at Biscuit Run
The music they played together
The gardens they grew
The mist in the fields at Bellair Farm
The quiet certainty that they are soulmates walking the same path
And that is the kind of wedding story I live to tell.
Gabby and Zack didn’t want their wedding photographed.
They wanted their love for each other and for the Earth to be remembered.
And Bellair Farm, on an October afternoon wrapped in mist and light, held that story gently for us to capture.
