Some weddings just make sense for the space they’re in, and Mollie and Tyler’s summer wedding at Haw River Ballroom was exactly that. Whimsical, a little retro, colorful without feeling overly styled, and filled with details that actually felt personal to them. Between the sunflowers, ferns, 1,001 paper cranes, the disco ball, and Mollie’s lace wedding dress, there was something interesting to photograph everywhere I looked.
Located in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, Haw River Ballroom already has a personality of its own. It’s not a traditional blank-slate ballroom, and Mollie and Tyler didn’t try to make it one. Instead, their wedding leaned into everything that makes the venue a little funky and unexpected — which also made it an absolute dream to photograph on both digital and 35mm film.
A Summer Wedding at Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, NC
Haw River Ballroom is one of my favorite kinds of North Carolina wedding venues: the kind that already feels interesting before you bring a single thing into it. The historic architecture, huge windows, warm wood, brick, multiple levels, stage, and disco ball give it this industrial-meets-retro feeling that’s completely different from a traditional ballroom.
For Mollie and Tyler’s summer wedding, all of that character was softened with tons of greenery, ferns, sunflowers, and handmade details. Instead of covering up what was already there, everything worked with the venue. The result felt colorful and whimsical while still having this slightly nostalgic, almost vintage feeling that fit Haw River Ballroom perfectly.
It also meant that every part of the day photographed differently. The natural light coming through the building during the day felt completely different from the moodier, colorful light later in the evening — something that became especially fun once I started switching between digital and film.
1,001 Paper Cranes, DIY Florals & A Wedding That Felt Personal
One of the most memorable details from Mollie and Tyler’s wedding was the 1,001 paper cranes surrounding them throughout the space.
Traditionally, folding 1,000 origami cranes — known as senbazuru — is associated with wishes for happiness, good fortune, and longevity. Beyond the meaning behind them, they were also such a beautiful visual element inside Haw River Ballroom. Seeing all of those delicate paper cranes against the industrial architecture added another layer of texture and whimsy to the entire wedding.
The florals were DIY, with sunflowers, ferns, and greenery bringing a loose, summery feeling into the space. I honestly love when couples choose details because they genuinely like them rather than because they fit into a specific wedding trend. Nothing about Mollie and Tyler’s wedding felt like it had been copied from a Pinterest board. It felt collected, handmade, and very specifically theirs.
Those are always the details I end up loving most as a documentary wedding photographer. Of course I want to photograph the big, beautiful parts of the day, but I also want the little things that tell the story of whose wedding this was.
Wedding Planning with The Dancing Tulip Events
A wedding can feel relaxed and spontaneous while still having a whole lot happening behind the scenes, and that’s where having a great planning team makes such a difference.
The Dancing Tulip Events helped bring Mollie and Tyler’s Haw River Ballroom wedding together and keep everything moving throughout the day. With a venue this layered and so many handmade details incorporated into the design, having someone managing the logistics allowed the actual wedding to feel easy.
That matters for photography, too. The less a couple has to worry about what is supposed to happen next, the more they can actually be present with their people. Those in-between moments — conversations, reactions, hugs, people wandering onto the dance floor — are usually where some of my favorite photographs come from.
Photographing Mollie’s Lace Wedding Dress on 35mm Film
And now we need to talk about the film(!!!!!!)
Mollie’s lace wedding dress was basically made to be photographed on 35mm. Film has this way of holding texture without making everything feel overly crisp or perfect, and the combination of the lace, film grain, greenery, and historic ballroom gave some of these photographs an almost timeless quality.
That’s one of the reasons I love incorporating 35mm film into wedding photography in the first place. I’m not trying to make a wedding look artificially vintage. I want the medium to add something to the photographs that digital captures differently.
With Mollie’s dress especially, it did. The softness of the film paired with all of that intricate lace was SO GOOD, and once I got the scans back, they immediately became some of my favorite images from the day.
35mm Film + Haw River Ballroom's Incredible Lighting
The dress was only half of why the film from this wedding was so good.
Haw River Ballroom has incredibly unique lighting throughout the space. During the day, there’s natural light pouring in through the windows and bouncing around all of the old architecture. Once the reception begins, the entire atmosphere changes.
You have the stage lighting, darker corners, movement, colorful light and, of course, the disco ball. This is where I want film to feel like film.
I don't need every reception image to be perfectly clean and frozen in time. I love the grain. I love when there's movement. I love the occasional blur of someone dancing through the frame or the way film interprets a strange pocket of colored light differently than I expected.
Mollie and Tyler's reception gave me so many opportunities to play with that. The retro feeling of Haw River Ballroom combined with the texture of 35mm made some of the photographs feel like they could have been pulled from an entirely different decade. And that’s the sweet spot for me: using film because it contributes something to the story rather than simply shooting it because film is trendy right now.
Documentary Wedding Photography at Haw River Ballroom
Haw River Ballroom also lends itself really well to a more documentary approach to wedding photography.
There are people moving between different areas of the venue, conversations happening off to the side, guests looking down from different levels, changing light throughout the evening, and eventually everyone gathering underneath that disco ball. There’s constantly something happening.
Rather than interrupting all of that to manufacture moments for the camera, I’d much rather move through the room and pay attention.
I’m looking for your best friend’s reaction during the ceremony. Your parents talking to each other when they think nobody is paying attention. The person absolutely losing their mind on the dance floor. The way you instinctively reach for each other in a crowded room. The tiny details you spent months making that you might not even have time to fully notice on the wedding day.
We’ll still make intentional portraits, especially when you show up in a lace dress begging to be photographed on film - but the majority of your wedding shouldn’t feel like one long photoshoot. It should feel like your wedding.
A North Carolina Wedding Venue for Couples Who Want Something Different
If you're searching for a unique wedding venue in North Carolina, Haw River Ballroom deserves a spot on your list — especially if the traditional ballroom or country club wedding isn't really your thing.
The space already has so much character that you can take the design in a million different directions. Mollie and Tyler brought in sunflowers, ferns, DIY florals, and hundreds upon hundreds of paper cranes and somehow it all felt completely at home underneath a disco ball in an old mill.
That’s exactly what made this wedding so much fun to photograph. It wasn't about creating a day that looked like everyone else's. It was about creating something that felt like Mollie and Tyler, and then letting the photography preserve it exactly that way.
If you’re still searching for a venue, I’ve also put together a guide to some of my favorite unique wedding venues in and around Raleigh.
Planning Your Own Haw River Ballroom Wedding?
My approach combines documentary wedding photography with intentional portraiture and 35mm film, so you get the beautiful photographs you want and all of the weird, emotional, hilarious, blink-and-you-missed-it moments happening around them.
