Gia Han + Brian | A Lakewold Gardens Wedding on Super 8 Film

Gia Han and Brian's wedding at Lakewold Gardens felt like stepping straight into a garden storybook.

I had recently returned from a road trip through the UK, where my husband and I spent so much time wandering through old manor houses, historic estates and gardens. Coming home and revisiting Gia and Brian's wedding made me see Lakewold Gardens through a completely different lens.

There are places that somehow transport you outside of Washington, and Lakewold is absolutely one of them.

As I'm sure is true for many of you, I have a deep love for beautiful, thoughtful architecture and places that have been cared for over generations. You can feel that at Lakewold. The old estate, formal gardens, enormous trees, hedges, pathways and little garden rooms all have a sense of history that can't really be recreated.

It's a nature lover's haven with a little European flair and exactly the kind of place that becomes magic on Super 8 film.

A Lakewold Gardens Wedding Near Tacoma, Washington

Lakewold Gardens sits on 10 acres along Gravelly Lake in Lakewood, just outside of Tacoma. The history of the property dates back to 1908, with the gardens evolving through several generations of owners before Corydon and Eulalie Wagner purchased the estate in 1938.

In 1958, renowned landscape architect Thomas Church began working with the Wagners to refine the gardens, creating a landscape that blends formal European garden design with the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Today, the property unfolds through a series of garden rooms from boxwood parterres and an Elizabethan knot garden to woodland paths, rhododendrons, roses, water features and some truly incredible old trees.

It's the kind of wedding venue where you could spend hours making portraits without ever needing to leave the property.

Every turn gives you something different.

A Wedding Day Filled With Joy

As beautiful as Lakewold is, what really stands out to me when I watch Gia and Brian's Super 8 wedding film is how incredibly happy this day was.

You can see it in the way Gia and Brian look at each other. You can see it in their friends and families. There is this energy running throughout the footage where everyone just seems genuinely thrilled to be there celebrating these two people.

That's one of my favorite things about Super 8.

It captures emotion in such an unpolished way. A laugh might only exist for a handful of frames. Someone runs into the shot. The camera moves. The light changes. A person you love is smiling somewhere in the background.

Those little pieces are often what make the footage feel the most alive.

Gia and Brian were also surrounded by an incredible wedding team who brought so much thought and beauty into the day. From the florals and stationery to the rentals, fashion, food and entertainment, everything felt considered without losing the warmth of the celebration.

The result was a wedding that felt elevated and beautifully designed, but still completely joyful.

Why Lakewold Gardens Is Made for Super 8

Some wedding venues make my job as a filmmaker incredibly easy because the environment gives us so much to work with. Lakewold Gardens is one of them.

Super 8 loves texture, movement and beautiful light, and a historic garden estate gives you an endless supply of all three.

The movement of flowers and trees. Walking down an old garden path. A dress moving through the grass. Guests spilling out onto the lawn. The architecture of the Wagner House appearing between all that greenery.

There's no need to force every moment into a perfectly composed scene.

We can wander.

And that's usually when my favorite footage happens.

Film also adds another layer of history to a place like Lakewold. You're documenting a modern wedding with a medium that immediately feels archival, inside gardens that have themselves been shaped and cared for for more than a century.

The combination feels timeless rather than trendy.

Tacoma + Washington Super 8 Wedding Videography

My favorite wedding films are the ones where the location, design and people all give us something to play with and Gia and Brian's Lakewold Gardens wedding had all of it.

With my Super 8 wedding films, I deliver a shorter edited film set to music that's easy to watch and share, as well as the RAW Super 8 footage from the wedding day.

The edited film lets me distill the day into its feeling.

The raw footage lets you experience all of those little pieces again like an old family home movie, the fleeting expressions, people in the background and tiny moments that may not have made the final edit but become increasingly meaningful as the years pass.

That's really why I love weddings on film.

Super 8 doesn't need a wedding to be perfect. It lets it be alive.

And when you combine that with a place as beautiful as Lakewold Gardens and a celebration as joyful as Gia and Brian's, there isn't much more I could ask for.

If you're planning a Lakewold Gardens wedding, a garden wedding near Tacoma or Seattle, or you're looking for a Super 8 wedding videographer in Washington, this is exactly the kind of day I would love to put on film again.