Expedition Joy

Courtney was an amazing photographer to work with! We had a great engagement session and recently had our wedding and I already received our sneak peek two days later. her photos are beautiful and the way she edits is super romantic and bright, truly wonderful to work with!

I recently had the pleasure of working with Courtney for my December wedding, and I couldn't be happier with the results. Her professionalism and attention to detail were evident throughout the entire process. Courtney has a keen eye for capturing the most special moments, and her creativity truly shines in every shot. The quality of the photos is exceptional, and the way she managed to capture the emotions of the day is simply remarkable. Not only did she excel in traditional wedding portraits, but her candid shots were equally stunning. Courtney made everyone feel at ease, and her friendly demeanor added a positive energy to the day! I highly recommend Courtney for anyone looking for a talented and reliable wedding photographer who can beautifully document the magic of their special day.

Courtney was our photographer for our wedding day! After seeing our engagement photos we knew we had made such a great choice. Photos are the only thing you get to really keep from that day, and Courtney captured our memories to have forever. Courtney was flexible with our coordinator in planning the schedule and kept us on track. She had great photo ideas and also heard our desires for flash photos and DELIVERED. Beyond being a great professional, Courtney is such a genuine and lovely personality to have with you throughout one of the biggest days of your life. My husband and I cannot thank her enough for all of her great work on our wedding day!

Courtney was our wedding photographer and she did an amazing job! The photos themselves are absolutely gorgeous. My husband and I are not usually comfortable taking photos of ourselves, but during the engagement shoot, Courtney made us feel right at home! Courtney provided not just poses or suggestions but easy conversation that helped the photo taking feel a lot more natural. She traveled to us as we did not live near our wedding venue and couldn't travel to the Chicagoland area for the engagement shoot. She used Zoom for our pre-wedding meetings which really helped our personal travel costs. On the wedding day, she was a huge help in keeping things running and organized. We did not feel the need to hire a day of coordinator since we felt comfortable knowing that she was well-prepared and professional. She worked super well with our other vendors and very easily got along with our family members! When she noticed that my husband and I had not had a chance to eat yet, she helped arrange for us to have a private dinner before we shot the sunset photos. It was clear to us that Courtney didn't just care about giving us great photos but cared about our day and how we were doing! I cannot recommend Courtney enough!!!

We are so grateful to have found Courtney to photograph our wedding day. From start to finish, she made us feel comfortable and relaxed. She helped plan our vision for the big day and made it a reality. She gave us her time on more than one occasion to meet before the wedding to talk details and vision. With a background in wedding planning, we knew she would have everything under control and keep us on track so we could focus on each other and enjoying the special moments. It’s so important for your wedding photographer to make you feel at ease on your big day and she does such a great job at that. She is kind, personable and you can tell she truly loves what she does which makes all the difference and you can see it in her work. Cannot recommend or say enough good things about Courtney. A bonus.. she got our photos back to us so quickly! We had a solid sneak peek of photos within TWO DAYS of our wedding which was so exciting.

Courtney did the photography at our wedding and I couldn't be more happy with every part of working with her! The photos turned out amazing and told a beautiful story of our wedding day. A great combination of candid moments and gorgeous portraits. The sneak peeks we're done within days of our wedding and the entire gallery in a timely fashion afterwards. Not only was she a great photographer but her presence at the wedding was amazing. All my guests and bridesmaids/groomsmen commented on how fun she was to be around and how great she was. She made the entire day feel so comfortable and relaxed. I'm so glad I chose her to document our big day!!

Courtney did the absolute best job with our wedding and engagement pictures! Not only did she take some amazing pictures but she also had numerous meetings with us before the wedding to make sure that all our details were in place. By the time we got to our wedding day, Courtney felt more like a friend than a vendor! We loved that she has experience doing coordination as well because she was able to keep everything going in a timely manner throughout the day without the pictures feeling rushed. She did an especially great job doing our family pictures. Our family can be hard to wrangle at times but she had a great balance of direction and assertiveness that helped us get all the pictures that we wanted with plenty of time for them to join cocktail hour! She did an amazing job at capturing all parts of our day from detail shots, candid shots, portraits, and moments from the ceremony/reception. She also surprised us with having over 70 "sneak peak" images for us just 2 days after our wedding! We are still waiting to get all our images back but we can already say with 100% certainty that Expedition Joy was worth the investment.

Look no further for your day of coordinator. Courtney was AMAZING. She executed my vision perfectly and was so organized and on top of the day. She kept us on schedule and running smoothly. Will be recommending her to everyone!

Courtney was our day of coordinator and I cannot say enough kind things about her! Leading up to the event, she made sure to get every last detail down so that she could help make the wedding go as smoothly as possible. I don't know what I'd do without her... At the rehearsal she brought everyone together and made sure we were on the same page. Then, on the day of the wedding, she helped set up decor (so beautifully!!), make sure questions were answered, and issues were troubleshooted (including a broken dress, getting more ice for the bartender, helping me bustle my dress, and so much more!). The day after the wedding, I even found out there were issues that arose that she dealt with that I didn't even know about! Having her there made the experience go much more smoothly and stress free. I also received a million complements from my family and bridal party who said she made their days much less stressful too. Thanks so much Courtney!

We used Courtney as our day of planner at our wedding. Although it’s called a “day of planner”, she did much more, especially the weeks leading up to our wedding, which took A LOT off of my plate! She emailed timelines to all of our vendors, came up with schedules and recommended many details that I have never thought of. She was absolutely wonderful to work with. Courtney is an organized, experience, confident and kind planner who knows what she’s doing. We had a couple of minor dilemmas on the wedding day, as everyone does, but I never once felt stressed about them because they were immediately taken care of and a solution was right there, already thought out. She is also a photographer so she was great at directing the us and the bridal party when needed. I definitely recommend her!!! Everyone needs a Courtney on their wedding day!

Courtney was our photographer for our engagement photos and our wedding. We were pretty nervous for the engagement session but she made us feel right at home, gave direction and it made us really excited for the wedding photos. She’s super nice, talented, easy to work with and always delivers. It is so hard for me to feel comfortable in front of a camera but she was amazing and I would highly recommend her! Thank you Courtney!

We hired Courtney as our photographer for our wedding, and are so glad we did! From the start, she has always been super responsive to emails and texts. She was great at answering my questions and putting me at ease! We had a blast shooting our engagement photos with Courtney. Even though it was our first time meeting in person, it felt like we’ve been friends for years! She did a great job at making us feel comfortable in front of the camera and finding ways to make us laugh, and had fun and amazing photo ideas. It was awesome to be able to establish a connection with her before the wedding day, so we were that much more comfortable! The fact that Courtney is also a wedding coordinator really helped out with being the lead photographer. She was a huge help with creating the wedding day schedule, and helped everything go so smoothly the day of. We are thrilled with our photos with her, we’ve gotten so many compliments on them! We will definitely use Courtney again someday, if possible!

Courtney and her team were absolutely PERFECT. She did such an incredible job capturing our special day! She was so flexible, she made sure we felt comfortable and had such a great ideas for all our photos! Honestly all of us had so much fun, especially with the champagne pop that she suggested - some of favorite photos!! She was timely and made sure to capture everything we asked for. She made it SO EASY! One of kindest people and did nothing but make our day amazing. Her pictures are spot on and didn’t disappoint. We loved having her be a part of our day! I would HIGHLY recommend her! Thank you, Courtney!!!

I have attended several weddings that Courtney from Expedition Joy has either coordinated or photographed. I am consistently impressed as she handles big or small hiccups throughout the day in an efficient and calm way, and she goes above and beyond to serve each wedding couple. Her photography is gorgeous, and she will make sure that every important photo is taken, while also capturing the natural joy and emotions of your day (all while keeping the wedding on schedule)! She maintains such a calm and collected demeanor, whether she is coordinating or photographing a wedding, and will make sure you can relax and enjoy your special day!

Courtney screwed up big time for our wedding. After months of planning and investing hard earned savings for the perfect wedding day she ruined our ceremony. The officiant and I were told that she (or the DJ who was not at rehearsal) would prompt us when to walk down the aisle. We were never prompted and had a building sense that something was wrong when the flower girls and ring bearer walked down the aisle. Without noticing that the groom and officiant were not at the end of the aisle she sent my bride and her father down the aisle and ruined the most important moment of the whole day because I was not where I was supposed to be. It’s literally infuriating that something so obvious and easy could go so wrong. We paid her to do something that I could have done myself without screwing it up. When my new wife reached out to her after the wedding she partially owned up to her mistake but said “I told the groom that they would walk up after the parents but either the DJ or I would cue them” that was a straight up lie because the officiant and I were only told that we would be cued and we never were. If you want someone to set up tables and decorate Courtney is great but the biggest mistake of our whole wedding was entrusting her to coordinate the ceremony. My new wife was so excited to make eye contact with me as soon as the doors opened and see my reaction to how beautiful she is. When the doors opened she was scanning the room and when her eyes met mine all she saw was how extremely pissed off I was that Courtney screwed up the most important moment of our day. Everyone makes mistakes including myself. My most recent one was trusting Courtney to cue me when to be in position for the most important moment of my life…

We hired Courtney to be our Day-of coordinator for our wedding on July 27, 2019 and it was the BEST decision we made during our wedding planning process. I had gone back and forth about hiring a coordinator and thought that I'd reach out to the bridal Facebook group that I joined to see if anyone had any recommendations and that's how I got connected with Courtney. From our first phone conversation, I immediately knew that I had to hire her and wanted her to be a part of our big day. I wasn't able to meet Courtney until the night before our wedding at our rehearsal but since we talked so much leading up to the wedding, I felt like I already knew her so well. When I first hired her, I just thought that I'd have her help with taking care of any communication with the vendors on our wedding day because I didn't want my girls or mom to have to deal with it but she ended up doing so much more than I ever could have asked for. I know she did so many things behind the scenes that I luckily didn't have to deal with and I can't thank her enough for it. I made a list of things that I wanted help with and she went above and beyond that list and she made sure that everything was done perfectly. Courtney stepped in multiples times during the day to fix/finalize things that would have pulled either myself or my girls away from our duties for the day. Whenever I needed her, she was there- to clean the makeup off my dress that I accidentally got on it from wiping off my sweaty forehead, sewing down a piece of wire that starting cutting into my sides, and so much more. Courtney is the reason that I was sane and calm on my wedding day and I couldn't thank her enough for what she did for us. I knew that once I got to the venue, I wouldn't have to worry about anything because I had her there to help me. My husband and I were so impressed with her and highly recommend her to everyone that's getting married. Courtney is an amazing person with a big heart, kind demeanor, extremely professional and the exact person you want to have around on your wedding day!!

Courtney was an amazing coordinator!! I would hire her again and again. She was outgoing, relaxed, and handled everything professionally and gracefully! I had so many questions and concerns about wedding ceremonies/details and she had ALL of the answers. She kept everyone on time, made sure I was doing fine, ran our rehearsal in an organized way, and in general, made me feel relaxed and comfortable with the whole day. She made sure flowers were repurposed where they were supposed to be, and helped clean up at the end of the night. She worked incredibly graciously with all of the other vendors, and was all-around amazing. If you aren't sure if you need a "day of" coordinator, YOU DO, and Courtney is your gal. Thank you for everything!!

For our wedding, we had two main goals: 1) get married, 2) have a blast doing it. We didn’t want to have to worry about all the small details on the day of, so we hired Courtney and are SO grateful we did. From the very first Skype call, I knew we had made a good choice! She’s incredibly knowledgable about weddings, had a ton of ideas and was able to think quickly on the fly, super friendly and easy going. She was very intent on making sure that on the day of, neither me or my husband had to worry about managing things like vendor arrival, decorating, take down, guests with questions, etc. She even loaded gifts into my parents car at the end of the night! Our wedding would have been much more stressful without her around — we are so thankful for all of her help and guidance! If you’re on the fence, just jump it and hire her 🙂