Chicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the Midwestern United States, as well as the third-most populous city in the United States with more than 2.8 million residents. Adjacent to Lake Michigan, the Chicago metropolitan area (commonly referred to as Chicagoland) has a population of more than 9.5 million people in three U.S. states, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, and was the third largest U.S. metropolitan area in 2000. One of the largest cities in North America, Chicago is among the world's twenty-five largest urban areas by population, and rated an alpha world city by the World Cities Study Group at Loughborough University.

Chicago incorporated as a city in 1837 after being founded in 1833 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. The city soon became a major transportation hub in North America and the transportation, financial and industrial center of the Midwest. Today the city's attractions bring 44.2 million visitors annually. O'Hare International is the second busiest airport in the world. The city has a notable and famous political culture,[citation needed] is a stronghold of the Democratic Party, and has been home to numerous influential politicians, including the first African-American President of the United States, Barack Obama. Chicago has also been chosen as one of the final 4 candidates to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, and the only American city still in the running.

Chicago is often called the "Windy City", "Chi-Town", "Second City," and the "City of Big Shoulders".

First Settlers
During the mid-18th century the area was inhabited by a native American tribe known as the Potawatomis, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples. The first permanent settler in Chicago, Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area’s first trading post. In 1803 the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in the 1812 Fort Dearborn massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded the land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of 350. Within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4, 1837. The name "Chicago" is the French rendering of the Miami-Illinois name shikaakwa, meaning “wild leek.”The sound shikaakwa in Miami-Illinois literally means 'striped skunk', and was a reference to wild leek, or the smell of onions. The name initially applied to the river, but later came to denote the site of the city.

Chicago Wedding photography is the photography of activities relating to weddings. It encompasses photographs of the couple before marriage (for announcements, portrait displays, or thank you cards) as well as coverage of the wedding and reception (sometimes referred to as the wedding breakfast in non-US countries). It is a major commercial endeavor that supports the bulk of the efforts for many photography studios or independent photographers.

Like the technology of photography itself, the practice of Chicago wedding photography has evolved and grown since the invention of the photographic art form in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. In fact, an early photograph, recorded some 14 years after the fact, may be a recreation for the camera of the 1840 wedding of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. However, in the early days of Chicago Wedding photography, most couples of more humble means did not hire a wedding photographer to record the actual wedding itself. Until the later half of the 19th century, most people didn’t pose for formal wedding photos during the wedding. Rather, they might pose for a formal photo in their best clothes before or after a wedding. In the late 1860s, more couples started posing in their wedding clothes or sometimes hired a wedding photographer to come to the wedding venue.

Due to the nature of the bulky equipment and lighting issues, Chicago wedding photography was largely a studio practice for most of the late 1800s. Over time, technology improved, but many couples still might only pose for a single wedding portrait. Wedding albums started becoming more commonplace towards the 1880s, and the photographer would sometimes include the wedding party in the photographs. Often the wedding gifts would be laid out and recorded in the photographs as well.

At the beginning of the 20th century, color wedding photography became available, but was still unreliable and expensive, so most wedding photography was still practiced in black and white. The concept of capturing the wedding "event" came about after the Second World War. Using film roll technology and improved lighting techniques available with the invention of the compact flash bulb, wedding photographers would often show up at a wedding and try to sell the photos later. Despite the initial low quality photographs that often resulted, the competition forced the studio photographers to start working on location. Initially, professional studio photographers might bring a lot of bulky equipment, thus limiting their ability to record the entire event. Even "candid" photos were more often staged after the ceremony. In the 1970s, the more modern approach to recording the entire wedding event started evolving into the practice as we know it today.