01/14/2026
Hi! So happy you’re here! 🤍✨ I’m Natalie, the founder and owner of Once Upon a Time Photo & Film, a boutique company where I’ve been creating lasting memories for couples and families for over a decade. Alongside my talented team, I capture love stories through high-quality photos and films that are meant to become treasured family heirlooms for generations to come.
Cameras were always a huge part of my life growing up in Georgia. My parents constantly filmed both the big milestones and the everyday moments on our 90s camcorder. We’d mail home videos to family or put on entire talent shows just to be filmed. I loved being both in front of and behind the camera, and those home movies remain some of my most cherished possessions today.
At the same time, I was completely obsessed with movies. I collected vintage movie posters, decorated my bedroom walls with them, and spent hours watching classic films on VHS. That love for cinema led me to earn my Master’s degree in Film from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where I wrote my final dissertation on the 1960s classic Easy Rider. I also traveled throughout Europe attending international film festivals, writing reviews, and interviewing filmmakers and actors for my university newspaper.
After graduating, I wanted to do more than write about films -I wanted to make them. I moved back to Atlanta, worked on Hollywood productions, and began directing my own narrative films. While I’m incredibly grateful for everything I learned, the long days, overnight shoots, and demanding lifestyle weren’t sustainable for me or my health.
Then one day, while working on a wedding special of Say Yes to the Dress, I was struck by how powerful real love stories truly are. That moment changed everything. I shifted my focus back to what first inspired me as a child - filming real stories about what matters most: family. I opened my own business, stepped into wedding filmmaking full time, and never looked back.
Today, every film I create blends heartfelt family storytelling with a cinematic eye. My goal is to create timeless, modern, and authentic wedding films that bring a touch of movie magic to real-life modern fairytales.