IS actually gold. At least it is in this lovely tablescape created by the extraordinary Cyd Converse of The Sweetest Occasion! Cyd was invited to participate in a design challenge at A Subtle Revelry and recruited me to photograph the setup which of course I was thrilled to do. These wintertime inspiration shoots are a tradition now and I am all about it because 1. they are a blast, 2. it is really interesting to watch Cyd create these pretty setups from scratch, and 3. I usually end up with a cake.

Cyd is so ridiculously creative… those are cupcake liners formed into flowers and spraypainted gold. Awesome!

Love this! If you’re throwing a wedding or any other party, it can be used as a guestbook!

Cyd added a few pops of red and purple to give the table a completely different feel without a ton of work…

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, I hope you have a lovely day!

So excited to announce I’ve had a wedding featured in the gorgeous spring issue of WellWed magazine! Ann Clowe from The Topiary got the ball rolling on submitting Lizy and Wyatt’s beautiful summer wedding at Esperanza Mansion. I’d never submitted a wedding for publication before, so I sort of fumbled my way through it but was sooo thrilled when I got the message saying we made it in. Check out the spreads!

Can’t wait to pick up the printed issue!!

Apologies for yet another lapse in blogging… I have spent the last month alternating between snuggling with Pepper, looking at Pepper, taking pictures of Pepper and looking at pictures of Pepper- a busy schedule that hasn’t left much time for blogging! Heh heh. Happy 2011! A huge thank you to all my incredible 2010 clients… what a year it was! I’m thinking of compiling a 2010 favorites post, but first things first!

Alycia is the sister one of my lovely 2008 brides, Cristyn, so of course I was thrilled to get her email about her 2011 wedding… I love doing multiple weddings for a family, it is so much fun! We chatted about the wedding and went over all the details and when they were ready to book I asked Alycia for her fiancé’s last name. When she told me, I pretty much turned into a valley girl and was like “NO. WAY. NOWAY!” It turns out Cameron and I grew up on the same street! I hadn’t seen him in probably 20 years, so of course I was excited to see him again. We lucked out with a 40-ish degree day (after 2 straight weeks of below freezing) and met up at High Falls to start things off.

There’s so much great color around High Falls.

One of my favorites… they’re so cute together.

We also headed over to the Memorial Art Gallery for a few shots. These twisted branches make a cool pattern in the background.

Alycia and Cameron were so fun to photograph, just totally chill and laughing pretty much the whole time. Makes things easy for me!

The front of the MAG is really beautiful.

This is ridiculously cute. Ridiculously!

I hope you guys had as much fun as I did, see you in a few months!!

Ahhh… that blog silence was the sound of me catching up on my editing! The end of the season is always a hectic time with so many weddings to edit and lots of people trying to schedule portraits to take advantage of the beautiful fall colors. I was so happy to get Rebecca and Ryan’s engagement in while the leaves were just at peak. Engagements are always a great way to get to know each other before the wedding, and without fail they make me 10x more excited for the wedding… that’s certainly the case here, Rebecca and Ryan were great sports and totally up for anything. It was such a fun shoot!

They brought their beautiful husky Kiyra, which was cool. I love dogs and am always in favor of incorporating pets in to shoots!

Leaves on the ground are perfect for photography. So much color! Also, SHOES! Those are some serious heels. My brides hike in stilettos, I love it.

At one point Rebecca confessed that she and Ryan were “bad at pictures.” Oh, you are so wrong my dear! So very, very wrong.

Ridiculously cute.

Love this one.

I’m a huge fan of things flying through the air during a shoot (snow, rain, pollen, seed puffs, whatever) I think they add so much to a picture, so any chance I get to use them is always welcome. Rebecca and Ryan were in the middle of this field and as they walked through, tiny seed things were flying around, so Ryan offered to kick a bunch and send up a big cloud. They went flying everywhere, but Rebecca and Ryan hung in there like champs for a cute picture!

Ryan was super helpful “encouraging” the puffs to fly out of the plants, ha ha. He’d kick them and then immediately jump right into a pose, it was pretty impressive.

For this shot, Rebecca grabbed a handful of plants and shook them… one unfortunate gust of wind sent the entire blob of puffs directly into Ryan’s mouth. This is pretty much the only time I’ve ever wished I shot video, because it was flippin hilarious. Ryan inhaled a couple puffs, they both started choking and then Ryan kind of dropped Rebecca. It was such a mess, but we were all cackling hysterically (and Kiyra was howling from the car, which just added another layer of funny.) Rebecca wanted to make sure I included that sequence on the disc, and of course I did… I thought the final result was pretty sweet, too.

It was a long time coming… I met Emily over two years ago when she was a bridesmaid at Andra and Joe’s wedding. When she contacted me last year I was so excited… I love referrals, they’re just the best weddings. Plus, I get to see my past couples, which is always a treat! The wedding was at Artisan Works, and Emily and Mark had some cool plans for pictures, so I knew it’d be an awesome day!

We started off with a first sight at Emily’s parents house in the South Wedge… oooh that hand kiss. I love it when men do that. Emily looked so fabulous and happy!

Emily had reserved a couple of cool locations for pictures, I’ll start with Hochstein… she spent a lot of time there as a child and her dad (a member of the Mambo Kings!) also works there… music runs in the family for sure!

Dramatic!

We also did a few at Artisan Works… look at these shoes! So unusual, so rad.

More portraits at the end!

The ceremony was short and sweet…

That is one sharp lookin’ bridal party!

I loved the centerpieces, Emily had gathered all the vases from various sources and paired them up in complementary arrangements.

Their first dance was lovely…

Here’s Andra and Joe, looking as happy as ever!

Comin’ at ya… Sunken Gardens at Highland Park! This is such a nice spot for pictures. It’s especially helpful on a sunny day because there are lots of ways to play with the light. Love it!

CUTE!

Shadows!

Extra love this one!

Such a great day and wonderful couple… thank you for having me Emily and Mark!

Erica and Sean… where to begin! Erica is friends with my brother and sister-in-law and got in touch last summer about her wedding… her excitement about marrying Sean was palpable, and I couldn’t wait to see all her awesome ideas come to fruition on the wedding day! We finally got to meet in person for a planning session at Simply Crepes… which lasted almost four hours! Ah, my job is so hard! Erica, her mom and my friend and coordinator extraordinaire, Cyd, talked business for about 20 minutes and spent the rest of the afternoon eating amazing crepes and talking about fun wedding stuff and silly stories. Good times! I finally got to meet Sean when I was down in Jersey visiting Matt and Kerri this summer. We had a delicious Mexican fiesta and Sean arrived with some incredible IPA’s which pretty much made us instant best friends. Sean knows everything about beer, I don’t know all that much but I love hops! So with all that to go on, I knew it’d be a great day! I showed up to the salon and Erica was having her makeup done. I’m a flincher, so I totally understand why Erica had to take the reigns for some of the eyelining!

What a pretty profile this girl has!

I love first sights!

Obviously have to include this one… Erica of course had some major shoes (did anyone watch that tv show about Posh and Becks coming to the US? If so, did you not looove how she called everything “mayyjahhh”? I’m so sad that didn’t turn in to a thing. It was awesome. Anyway…) When I sat them down for some portraits, I noticed Sean’s awesome socks, so I had to get a shot of both!

Bridal party awesomeness. I love the different shades of purple!

Right after we finished up the portraits, Erica told Sean she wanted to get a sneak peak of the tent. Erica had a special surprise waiting for him…

Oh my deliciousness! Sean was totally shocked, it was cute.

And to the ceremony… Erica was so cute coming down the aisle with her mom!

The ceremony was short and sweet… just the vows.

The tent looked utterly fabulous. I loved the colors and all of Erica’s details!

Damn they are cute together!

So happy…

Party time! I have to start things off with this picture, I just can’t wait anymore! This is Sean’s dad, he is super awesome. Cyd, Becky and I spent pretty much the whole evening discussing said awesomeness:

He owned the dance floor!

Yes, I did take pictures of other people at the party, ha ha!

I love dance-offs!

Matt and Kerri cuteness!

Saturday happened to be Matt’s birthday, and Erica turned to Kerri and I for ideas on how to celebrate. Matt didn’t want anything taking attention away from Erica and Sean on their big day so he was not very cooperative and Kerri and I feared reprisal if we got involved. So Erica kept it low key and just grabbed the DJ’s mic to say “Happy Birthday” during the dancing. Here is a magical .gif where we can see Matt go from not having a clue what was going on, to the realization dawning, to begrudgingly accepting birthday wishes from everyone. Muuahahahahaha!

Portrait time!

There were lots of jokes about how much I made them kiss during the portraits, but I didn’t even do this one! So cute.

Pretty!

And, finally, a sparkler exit!

What a spectacular wedding… I had so much fun photographing you guys and your family and friends! Erica, thanks for making me dance, even though Thriller was cut off right before the dance part, I think Paula and I repped pretty well Sean, thanks for the Unearthly! I hope you’re having the best time in Vegas!!!