Off The Shot List
Weddings brought us here. Life gave us the rest of the story.
We’re Will and Christina, the husband-and-wife team behind The MacMeekens Photography. After more than a decade of photographing weddings and building a business, family, and wonderfully unconventional life together, we’ve learned that the best stories are rarely the ones anyone planned.
Off the Shot List is where we talk about all of it: weddings, marriage, creative work, homeschooling, neurodivergence, parenting, rock climbing, travel, and whatever else life puts in front of us.
Some episodes will help you plan a wedding that actually feels like you. Others may have absolutely nothing to do with weddings. Every episode is an honest, occasionally messy, and hopefully hilarious conversation about building a life together....and everything that happens outside the frame.
Off The Shot List
Episode 2 | Jus’ Fuhgeddaboudit
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If you’re currently planning a wedding and have found yourself spiraling over the timeline, the weather, your Pinterest board, or whether you’re supposed to do something because apparently weddings have rules…this one’s for you.
After more than a decade of photographing weddings, we’ve watched a LOT of things not go according to plan. Rain happens. Timelines run late. Pinterest lies. Traditions get skipped.
And you know what? People still get married. The party still happens. And some of the best moments come from the stuff nobody planned in the first place.
So we're talking about the things couples put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves to get “right,” what actually matters once the wedding day arrives, and why we're officially giving you permission to do whatever the hell you want with your own wedding.
Turns out, the things that make a wedding meaningful are rarely the things you can control perfectly.
Sure. Hopefully. Watch that fuck up everything.
SPEAKER_01Great. It's trash. I'm trash. Everything's trash.
unknownLove it.
SPEAKER_00Michael?
SPEAKER_01Michael! Identity theft is not a joke, Jim. Oh okay, we should start.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to. I didn't really shake out anything in between. All I did was put a hat on and hope for the best.
SPEAKER_01This is what happens when we record multiple episodes in one day. Efficiency. It's like anxiety.
SPEAKER_00It's always watching me.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So.
SPEAKER_00Caffeine will help with that, right?
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna just like weave us into our intro, Will. I'm gonna just do it. Yeah? Do you remember our intro?
SPEAKER_00I do not.
SPEAKER_01Okay, scroll up, top of page two.
SPEAKER_00Do you think I remember anything?
SPEAKER_01We're learning our rhythm, guys.
SPEAKER_00I don't remember a thing.
SPEAKER_01I will highlight it. Ready? Boom. You see it?
SPEAKER_00Maybe.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Maybe.
SPEAKER_01Here we go.
SPEAKER_00I can kind of see it.
SPEAKER_01We're Will and Christina McNeeken, the husband and wife team behind MacNeeken's photography. And this is off the shot list.
SPEAKER_00Weddings brought us here. Life gave us the rest of the story.
SPEAKER_01All right. So last episode, we let we let people get to know us a little bit. I feel like it was actually, I feel like we did pretty, pretty okay.
SPEAKER_00I hope we did. I haven't heard it yet. Now I'm now I'm sweating.
SPEAKER_01I'm running on vibes. Vibes feel good in the room.
SPEAKER_00I'm running on caffeine.
SPEAKER_01That's not so this time we're gonna kind of lean into help, what?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01Yeah?
SPEAKER_00Go.
SPEAKER_01Huh? Huh? Huh? This time we're gonna lean into something that's like actually just a splash of helpful. I don't know if it's actually helpful, but we're just gonna We're gonna talk about weddings. We're gonna talk about weddings.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I know. We're we love weddings.
SPEAKER_00I know, we do, I do. You do. We do. We do.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I think that we've we've kind of said this over and over over the last few years, over and over and over over the last few years.
SPEAKER_00Peter Piper picked a pack of pickle peppers.
SPEAKER_01William, we're so not good at this.
SPEAKER_00I don't think I said peppers at the end either, which is bad.
SPEAKER_01People, people pull it together. We have said a lot over the last couple years that weddings are kind of put into this box. And I think one of the most beautiful things about getting married in this day and age, that sounds so old, so boomer of me.
SPEAKER_00I hate to break this to you, dude.
SPEAKER_01Don't you dare say I'm old. I will kick you in those.
SPEAKER_00You're you're middle-aged. There. So you're not old, you're middle-aged.
SPEAKER_01I just unfiltered. There it is. Um, I I do feel like this should be a time, and really is a time where wedding rules don't really exist anymore. Like you don't have to throw a garter and a bokeh. You don't have to get married in a church. You don't have to just do cake and punch. You get to make this experience yours.
SPEAKER_00So what I'm hearing is do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_01Do whatever you want. Do what you want.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah? No?
SPEAKER_00Off to the rock, Jim. Let's go.
SPEAKER_01No, you don't get to do whatever you want. You get to do what I want, which is podcast today. Um, but I I think when we talk about weddings, there are key points that consistently come up as stressors for a couple. Okay. And while rules don't necessarily have to be respected for these things, I do think they are pretty recurring. So when we talked about this, we talked about timelines being unnecessarily stressful, wedding, uh, not weddings, well, also weddings, weather, other W word, weather being really stressful, um, feeling like you need to stick to traditions that may not necessarily fit you. So I kind of wanted to get your feedback um live and kind of dive into these things so that couples who may be planning a wedding and are stressed can maybe have some peace in mind. Do you want me to give like yeah, let's talk timelines.
SPEAKER_00Timelines.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's talk timelines.
SPEAKER_00Okay, we'll start there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um cool. Controversial, especially since I have a planner sitting in the room.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know. You ready? We brought in our wedding planner weighted blanket friend.
SPEAKER_00Umelines are an order of operations, not a recipe.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00If something runs ten minutes late, so what?
SPEAKER_01It's not the end of the world.
SPEAKER_00If and even if it runs an hour late.
SPEAKER_01No, it no, that's a problem.
SPEAKER_00But to the couple, to the couple, at the end of the day, they're there to spend time with the people they love, yeah. To get married in front of the people they love.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or hopefully love.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um we we we know reality here.
SPEAKER_01Um goodness. We're diving in deep fast.
SPEAKER_00Um, but no, like it's it's an order of operations, right? Yeah give and we have the ability to make these things either wildly more stressful than they need to be. Yeah, planning everything to the minute, or leave buffer time in front of stuff, right? Like I've had ceremonies run over, not start late.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but when I think I think that there are key moments that the time needs to be respected. Ceremony start time, we need to respect it. We need to, we need to do our best to get us and our couples to the ceremony on.