Maria Silva-Goyo Photography

Along with purchasing my then girlfriend's engagement ring, I needed a photographer! After looking through several websites and finding no one local to Cape May, NJ, we opened up the search and my mom forwarded me the information for Maria Silva-Goyo from Pennsylvania, who happened to have a wedding at Peter Shields in Cape May, the exact town where I was going to propose to my girlfriend, Christina, on the same date. I saw a few pictures of Maria's work online and was sold. Then came engagement day, Maria was very responsive and reassuring that she and her boyfriend, Scott, will be on the beach in location for the proposal shot. It came time to enter the beach with Christina - who thought she was getting a puppy - I let everything in the world go - including wondering where Maria and Scott would be - and enjoyed the moment and asked Christina to marry me on the beach in Cape May :), I vividly recall as I dropped to a knee to reach for the ring box seeing two photographers - swoop in to capture our perfect moment together. And the picture of the moment Christina said yes, is absolutely beautiful!!! To make it even better, we received photos that same night to share with family and friends! Afterwards, we had a one hour proposal photo session on the beach and those pictures came out incredible and it was the most fun hour together. We quickly got to know Maria and Scott and noticed how friendly and courteous they are. After our perfect engagement and photo session we had to make sure we worked with than Maria and Scott. She even gave us a discount and a complimentary engagement session! Unreal! Then came the engagement session the next year which was beautiful. We included our puppy Maui and the shots came out wonderfully! It was a blast and another example of the incredible work and person that Maria is. Then came wedding day! We scheduled for 7 hours with Maria and Scott and they arrived at 1245pm and the ceremony was scheduled for 3pm. All of the getting ready pictures and prep went great and Maria even helped me finish tying the bow-tie I wore. Maria found a pushpin at the Convention Hall prior to the ceremony to tighten my tie...above and beyond!! Maria and Scott took perfect pictures during our ceremony, capturing everything from Christina walking down the aisle, to me crying, to our vows, our first kiss, and our dip kiss walking out of the ceremony. Then family photos and pictures of the beach were so fun and came out beautifully. We even escaped for sunset pictures during the reception. Maria and Scott captured everything we wanted and more. They were hand and hand with Christina and I from start to finish and one thing I thought was so cool was how they asked for a picture with us in the glam booth we had! Talk about a full circle moment!! Oh and we only were contracted with them until 745pm and they stayed for the entire wedding which ended at 9pm, just because they enjoyed it so much...no extra charge! Three days after our wedding we received dozens of sneak-peak photos that were amazing! Then about 6 weeks afterwards Christina and I received an album of probably 300+ pictures, incredibly captured and edited, from every part of our wedding day. So above and beyond and it was such a pleasure working with Maria and Scott. I recommend Maria Silva-Goyo to ANYONE who is looking to get engaged, get married, have children, anniversaries, big parties. She is incredible and her work is second to NO ONE!

Maria was the first vendor we booked and one of our best decisions we made with our wedding! Her and Scott made us feel instantly at ease when we met them for our engagement photo shoot, and they continued to be so kind and helpful throughout the entire wedding process. Maria and Scott have done countless weddings for our friends and family, and they have never disappointed! Their photos are absolutely gorgeous and we could not be more happy with the quality of their work. We cannot recommend them enough as your wedding photographer!

We can not begin to say enough good things about Maria Silva-Goyo Photography. While searching for our wedding photographers, we were looking for documentary-style photography to capture the story of our day, editing that stayed true to color and used depth of focus to help frame the perfect moments, and someone who we’d want to spend our entire wedding day around (you spend 6+ hours with your photographers–make sure you vibe well!). Maria was exactly what we were looking for. She is fun, professional, and captured all of our day perfectly. She managed to capture the cuteness of our derpy moments together as well as all of the love we share with each other and our friends and family. Maria was willing to try different ideas with the area around our venue to capture some truly unique wedding photos and also dealt with the bride’s incredibly large immediate and extended family for photos and managed to get all of us in one shot (no easy feat)! We felt incredibly at ease around both her and her husband, Scott, and are grateful for their friendship and support through our wedding day and beyond. The photo books Maria works with you to create are stunning and look like they belong in storybook libraries. We can’t wait for the next excuse to book a session with Maria and see her and Scott again!

Maria was the first vendor we booked after we found our wedding venue, since we were looking for specific things in a wedding photographer: a documentary/photojournalism style with natural-looking color grading; expertise in beach and daytime photography; and experience photographing LGBTQ+ couples -- and all of this within our budget. Maria checked all our boxes and even boxes we didn't even think to look for. She was so flexible and responsive in all our interactions with her, and even adjusted our timeline to include meeting up with us for sunset photos several hours after our daytime reception concluded. She surprised us with polaroids at the end of the day, which we were able to display at home right away, sent us a large number of sneak peek photos a few days after our wedding, and even included a montage video set to our processional song with our full gallery. Probably the best part of working with Maria (and Scott, her second photographer) is that while she is very professional, she is also down-to-earth and lets her personality shine through in all her interactions with her clients and in her web and Instagram presence. Since we knew our wedding photographer would be right up close while we experienced some of the most special moments of our relationship, we needed to feel like we somewhat knew and could trust that person, and we definitely felt that level of comfort with Maria and Scott. I'm someone who is very awkward whenever a camera is pointed at me, but they captured moments when I wasn't even aware of them shooting. When we received our gallery, looking at the photos brought us right back to our wedding day. We're having trouble narrowing down which ones to print or post, we love so many of them! If you're looking for photographers for your wedding who will work with you and are just kind, friendly people, we can't recommend Maria and Scott highly enough. If we ever have any other big life events we'd like photographed in the future, we'd reach out to them in a heartbeat.