Love is love. I'm going to keep saying it.

Hey y'all — it's Caity. I'm writing this from the studio in Austin the week after photographing a wildly joyful LGBTQ wedding in New Hampshire, and the week of yet another set of unsettling rulings out of the Texas courts on same-sex marriage. So we're going to do the thing where I say what I mean.

I held off on posting an early version of this for a long time. I kept thinking, I'll wait until the news cycle settles. I'll wait until the next ruling. I'll wait until I have something cleaner to say. Two and a half years and an entire studio rebrand later, the news cycle has not settled — and the cleaner thing to say turned out to just be the original thing, louder.

So here it is, refreshed for 2026, posted on purpose the week before Pride Month, and not going anywhere.

Love is love. Always. Still.

We've heard it a million times. It still bears repeating until every doubter finally hears the actual truth of it: love is love. Two women. Two men. A non-binary person and their partner. A trans couple. A queer pair using language the rest of us don't have yet. The emotional gravity of commitment is identical. The vows are identical. The crying-during-the-first-look is extremely identical.

I believe — with every fiber of me — that there is no valid reason for any of those weddings to be questioned, made conditional, or stood in front of the court of public opinion as "less than." We're human beings. We all want connection, companionship, ceremony, the chance to build a life with someone. To deny that to a person because of who they love is to deny their humanity. I will never stand for that. The Bohde Collective will never stand for that. End of section.

What "LGBTQ+ affirming wedding photographer" actually means here.

Putting a rainbow on Instagram in June isn't a stance. It's a sticker. Affirming is what you do every other month of the year and on the actual wedding day. Here's the working definition at The Bohde Collective:

• We use the names and pronouns you use. On the contract, on the gallery, in front of your aunt. If a family member uses the wrong one, we don't repeat it back in the captions.
• We don't force gendered roles into the timeline. No "who's the bride." No assumed walk-down-the-aisle order. No required first-look pairing. You tell us the shape of your day, we build the photo plan around it.
• We photograph chosen family with the same care as a parent. The friend who raised you. The chosen mom who flew in. The roommate who held you through the year you came out. They get the same lens, the same time, the same care.
• We treat queer rituals as central, not novelty. Hand-fasting, breaking the glass, jumping the broom, two officiants, a Pride-flag recessional, two wedding dresses, no wedding dress, a drag-queen toast — we light it the same way we light a first kiss.
• We book inclusive vendors. When you ask us to recommend florists, planners, DJs, hair-and-makeup, we recommend people we've already watched treat queer couples with the same warmth they treat anyone else.

If a vendor team makes a queer couple feel like a footnote on their own wedding day, that vendor team isn't on our short list — full stop.

Queer weddings I've shot have changed me.

I've cried over their vows in three different states. I've danced in their receptions. I've watched families that took fifteen years to come around finally get there, on a Saturday night, in front of a string-lit dance floor. I've photographed couples who refused to conform — built their ceremony from scratch, wrote their own rituals, named themselves with brand-new language — and the courage in those rooms is the kind of thing you feel in your chest before you see it through the lens.

Queer couples push the entire wedding industry to be better. They make us reexamine who walks down the aisle, who officiates, who "gives away" anyone, whose name comes first on the program, what counts as family in the formal portraits. Every one of those questions has made me a better photographer for every couple I shoot, not just queer ones.

The (very small) house rules.

I want to be crystal-clear, because I think it matters: if you don't share these beliefs — that love is sacred, equality is non-negotiable, and the LGBTQ+ community enriches our world, our weddings, and frankly our city of Austin — then you are not a Bohde Collective client, friend, or fan. That is the entire house rule. It's on the website. It's in the contract. It's not changing.

If you do share them: welcome. You're going to love working with us.

What you can do — because this is on all of us.

• Speak up when someone questions queer love in front of you — even if it's awkward, even if it's family.
• Hire queer-owned businesses, especially in the wedding and creative industries. Your dollars are a vote.
• When you're planning your own wedding (or recommending vendors to a friend), explicitly ask vendors whether they've worked with LGBTQ+ couples and how.
• Show up at Pride. In Austin, on Congress Ave., in your hometown, anywhere. Quiet acts of solidarity count too.
• Vote — local, state, federal — for the people and policies that protect civil rights and equality.

Frequently asked questions.

Be. Too. Much. — xo, Caity C. Jensen