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This last cool February, I met Daris and Jason for their engagement session. I had previously met Jason for coffee to chat about photography, but I hadn't yet met his adorable fiance Daris. The second I met her, I knew their wedding would be amazing. I just can't get over how SWEET Daris is. Just being around her makes you want to smile. I was so excited to be a part of this wedding and couldn't feel any more blessed to have shared in this day with both Daris and Jason.
Daris and Jason chose the Sassi Venue in Scottsdale to be married at and this venue always makes me smile. Its GORGEOUS and easy to work with. One special moment about the day was when Jason gave Daris her wedding gift. I felt so blessed to have witnessed this moment. Daris had already had a band that Jason gave her for the engagement session but had promised her a wedding band for the wedding. She opened up a small little box in front of her bridesmaids and gasped as she opened up a GORGEOUS shiny diamond ring. It was SO cute when she flung her arms up to dry her tears and said "I just wasn't expecting this" in the sweetest softest voice.
Looks like the day was off to a great start. Sassi was adorned by all of Daris and Jason's little details and it couldn't have been more beautiful. A special thanks to Serendipity Videography for being SO awesome to work with and of course the lovely Tamera with AZ Petal Pusher . She has yet again stylized an unbelieveable wedding. To see a slideshow of the rest of the day, Click HERE. |
| I LOVED the tree Daris and Jason had at the enterance to Sassi. It held adorable heart shaped bird seed.. so cute! |
| I loved how delicate all the little details were. |
| Tamera hung gorgeous roses from the canopy Jason and Daris were married under. |
| I just LOVE their expressions in this photos. So excited to begin the night. |
I often get many questions about album design. Finding an album that completely suits all your needs can be difficult, but once you find it, you'll LOVE IT! At the moment, I am currently a member of Pictage. I host my photos, order prints, and design/order all my albums from Pictage. I have LOVED the albums so far, but as I find my business growing, my personality is leaning towards a new album company. I have branded myself with my website and blog and I feel it's necessary and important to carry that specific branding throughout even the smallest details that I deliver to my clients. Cypress albums have always caught my attention and I am seriously obsessed with them! Once I order my studio sample, ill be sure to do another feature on them. I love that my album designs will remain the same but the cover of my albums will be different textures and more geared towards my style. I stumbled upon a GORGEOUS company at the WPPI trade show. I love this company because it's extremely similar to the flush mount pictage albums except the cover is a gorgeous material instead of leather. Again, everyone has different tastes and I suggest that every photographer pick an album that really fits their business branding.
Apart from finding the perfect company to print your albums, layouts are extremely important. I have found that a lot of photographers outsource their album designs to be designed. Even though outsourcing saves a lot of time, I just can't stop designing. I love being in charge of what the album looks like and how it is done. SO, when a client inquires about designing an album or purchases our packages with albums, I get excited to design their custom album to best display their wedding and engagement photos!!
One thing I have found to be a perfect keepsake for your wedding day is a engagement sign in book. I wanted to feature my engagement albums because I feel they are an awesome gem to have after the wedding is over.
Below is a 8x10 engagement album layout. I like to keep the album simple and feature the best images from the session. Most albums are 30 images and 22-25 sides (14 pages). I have also began offering a sign in engagement album where each guest can actually use a sharpie pen to sign each flush mount page. I created an album like this for my wedding and LOVED the fact that I have a gorgeous album with all my closest family and friends signatures to look back on and read while looking at our favorite engagement photos.
The engagement and wedding album design process is the same. After the wedding is finished and everyone is settled in, we begin the design process. Everyone wants to start the design process at different times so we don't have a set timeline as to when the album will be finished, but we begin as soon as possible. I think it's best to design the album initially with all the best images that work best with the layout and then give each bride and groom three separate opportunities to change the design to their liking.
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| This is the 8x10 engagement album that is offered in our collection II and III. Wedding albums are designed the same but in a larger size. |
| I love that the pages are thick, sturdy and durable. |
| This is our sign in album layout. This is only one page featured here but you can see that I leave a lot of white space around the photos so that each guest can sign around the photos and even over the photos if some prefer. |
| This is my new favorite addition to our company. I LOVE the album design cases that Millers Lab offers I LOVE that I am able to entirely design these cases through photoshop. I design each case according to each engagement shoot. Color, design and texture is all different. |
Spring has been approaching quickly and things just continue to get more busy. These past few weeks have been amazing and filled with incredible new people we have been blessed to work with.
We also had the chance to hang out in San Francisco this week while house sitting for our cousin and it was definitely a blast working in the city. Such a different feel from our spacious Scottsdale! We started our adventures on the long road from Scottsdale to San Francisco last weekend. We drank more coffee than anyone should and ate probably more doritos than I have in a lifetime, but we finally made it to gorgeous windy San Francisco. We pulled into the city just in time for dinner and where is a better place to go to eat your first night in the city? Near the water of course! We headed to Pier 39 and ate at the chain restaurant Bubba Gump's. Ever heard of it? Steve ordered shrimp of course and I stuck with the comfortable Mahi Mahi and we enjoyed our dinners as we relaxed after our long car ride back to the condo. About five hours later, Steve woke up with a horrible stomach ache and with what we all dread, FOOD POISONING. Oh dear Stephen. It was my turn to take care of Stephen. Months ago, some of you might remember the post I wrote about my experience with food poisoning. Well, this time it was my turn to return the love and care for Stephen. It was an awful start to a week in the city.
Anyways, we survived the stomach aches and spoonfuls of Peptol Bismol and we still enjoyed our time here. It's time to leave this busy city but I'll leave you with these three photos. We had the absolute pleasure to photograph Daris and Jason's wedding at the beautiful Sassi venue in Scottsdale. The venue, the details, and of course the couple all were absolutely beautiful and I am in love with this wedding! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and can't wait to post these sessions next week!
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| We met up with two very dear friends of ours in the heart of San Fran for a little mini photo op. Just had to share a sneak peak of these two... |
| And last but not least, little Charlie. We finally were able to meet our free portrait giveaway couple and it couldn't have been MORE fun! I can't wait to post these!!! |
A few years ago, I met the cutest girl alive at a bridal show. I loved how she talked with her hands and how she laughed at just about everything. Ashley and Bradly, her fiance at the time, ended up booking me for their GORGEOUS wedding in October. I was THRILLED to be working with such nice people and I felt at ease with them. Their wedding turned out gorgeous as all the little tiny details were perfect. A bit later, I received a call from Ashley about her ideas on event planning. Ashley was always talented in event planning as she worked huge corporate events and until she planned her own wedding. It was then that she realized she wanted to be in the wedding industry.
We met for lunch at the herb box and talked for two hours about wedding planning, photography and just simply life. I absolutely adore this girl and could talk on and on about her but for now, I'll let her creativity speak for itself. While we ate over lunch, Ashley pulled out her perfectly marked ideas with postets and she showed me all her ideas on setting up a mock up shoot and what she wanted her website to look like. We talked branding, websites and really just talked about our goals in this industry. It can sometimes feel lonely in this business if you don't have good solid trustworthy friends but I really know I found a true gem. I can't wait to work more with Ashley and If any of you brides out there want a fun loving TALENTED friend to run your wedding, check out Ashley. I promise you'll just LOVE her.
One thing I really love about Ashley is her motto. Ashley has so many creative ideas but she believes that you are able to really pull a gorgeous fabulous wedding together on a smart budget. She believes that being creative while "keeping it classy goes along way". I can't agree with her more. Ashley really believes in sticking to one concept and letting it grow. It's important to say a lot with a little whether you're spending 3,000 or 300,000.
Ashley just launched her website and I feel SO proud to have photographed her mock up photo session.
The gorgeous flower arrangements on the table and beautiful bouquet were made by the OH so talented Tamera from AZ Petal Pusher. I have worked with Tamera on designing my own wedding, and the past four weddings I've photographed and ALL of them are breathtaking.
The gorgeous invitations were made by Lydia at Paper Joy.
The table linens, chairs, and dishes were all rented through Deborah Beggs with Tri Rentals.
The adorable dress Christina is wearing is from Last Chance for $8.97. SERIOUSLY?! I love it.
Ashley also found some cute jewelry from For Love 21 and pieced things together. She really believes in pulling things together to save.
I am SO impressed with Ashley and I truly believe she's going to do GREAT things in this business. I can't wait to work more with her in the future!
A special thanks to Christina and David for being our gorgeous models! |
| This is the amazing designer behind it all!!!! |
This post means a lot to me. I have no idea where to even begin to write about this wedding, the amazing couple and their families. I have once again been blow away by God's never ending amount of grace he has given us and this wedding is a true testimony to just that.
Last year, I posted a free wedding giveaway. I really wasn't quite sure what to expect and I really wasn't sure anyone would even submit an entry to my contest... but I gave it a try. I was worried I would be sitting at my computer tapping my pen against my desk waiting for someone to just enter. To my surprise, there were A LOT of engaged couples that actually checked my blog! It seemed to spread like wildfire to anyone that was engaged at the time and was to be married in 2010. The contest had only a few rules. The couple was to be married in 2010 and I needed to know WHY each entry was deserving of free photography for their wedding.
Within a few days, I received more than just a few entries. I was SHOCKED and blown away by how honest everyone was about their lives and love for their future spouses. I felt honored to have read every single entry. Although there were some great entires, only one really soaked into my heart more than the others.
When I first read Lauren and Garrett's story, I cried. I couldn't seem to move on from her e-mail and the words she used when she spoke about her father and just why it was so important to her to have us photograph her wedding. While reading through all the entires, I read through Lauren's e-mail over and over again with a somber heart and heavy eyes. I knew I had found the wedding I so badly wanted to be apart of. I knew Lauren's words were honest and true.
I left out a few parts that were only meant for me... but here is Lauren's story :
I received your name from one of my dearest friends and she happily gave me your name when I got engaged in February this year. We have been close friends since kindergarten and have shared many similar life experiences, both happy and sad; in fact it's really strange how similar our lives have been. Fortunately, these similarities have brought us closer as friends and helped us weather the bad times and cherish the good times. Unfortunately, one thing we share is the loss of our fathers. My dad passed away suddenly at the age of 47 in a motorcycle accident on 7/7/07, and of course my best friend was the first of my friends to be at my side that day. Since then, she has been an unbelievable source of comfort and strength. I was really moved by the way she incorporated her father's spirit into her wedding ceremony through that beautiful song that was played. After becoming engaged, I have been searching for a special way to honor my dad at my wedding as well.
What really inspired me to write to you was my dad's passion for photography. As a teenager attending Chaparral High School, my dad discovered his knack for shooting beautiful pictures. He enrolled in photography classes at school, joined the yearbook staff, and even built a dark room in his parents’ house to develop his photos. I can remember throughout my childhood, my dad was always the one documenting every moment with his camera: portraits of my brother and I, action shots of us playing sports, and even creative landscape pictures. In fact, at my graduation from Texas Christian University, we laughed as he took photos of the massive mess of confetti and silly string left as the aftermath of the student celebration, saying they were his “artistic shots”. We laughed then, but no one could deny the true artistry and emotion that was evident in those shots as we looked at them on the computer the next day. He really had that special eye for capturing special moments.
My dad was always the man behind the lens, rather than the one in the picture, which made it difficult to put together photos for his memorial service. However, one of my most prized possessions is his camera that survived the crash. On it was the last pictures taken of his motorcycle trip through the beautiful Colorado mountains, including pictures of him with friends and relatives. These pictures will forever be a reminder of my dad’s passion for adventure and photography.
While I feel blessed that my fiancé Garrett had the opportunity to know my dad before he passed, I want my dad’s spirit to continue to be present in our daily lives as a married couple. I know that your artistic and fresh, yet classic style would be exactly the way my dad would want our wedding photos to be. They would be a great tribute to him and his legacy. Garrett and I will be married at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale with our reception at Grayhawk Golf Club on March 13, 2010, the day after what would have been my dad’s 50th birthday. In honor of him, we are hoping to have a beautiful wedding celebration full of his favorite things: good music, good food, and lots of good pictures!
I apologize for the lengthy note; it’s amazing how certain things just cause the words to flow right out of you! I have attached a picture of me and my fiancé so that you can put a name with a face. All the best to you, you truly have a gift.
God bless!
I couldn't have felt more blessed to be apart of such an amazing day. It was truly a beautiful day and as Stephen and I drove home that night, we felt so blessed to have such amazing people in our lives that we get to work with. What an absolute honor to have shared this day with you both. As I write this post and reflect on the gorgeous wedding day, I am reminded more and more just as to why I love this job so much. I love that I am able to give a gift to someone that has been given to me. Lauren and Garrett, thank you for allowing us to photograph your wedding day and for letting us document the most important day of your lives. I couldn't have imagined working with a more amazing couple with more beautiful hearts than yours. A special thanks to AZ Petal Pusher for creating such awesome designs at the wedding, Easton Ashe for bringing some AWESOME music to the wedding and Ashley Maddox the very talented videographer! It was awesome working with you guys! Click HERE to view a slideshow of the day. |
| Lauren is reading a letter Garrett wrote her before the ceremony. |
| I just LOVE watching the anticipation of first looks! |
| Lauren seriously is one of the most beautiful girls ive ever met. |
| Lauren wanted to make sure her dad was a big part of the wedding and I LOVED how she had a photo of him next to a cross on her bouquet. A special thanks to AZ Petal Pusher for doing such an AWESOME job with all the details and flowers. |
| Again, I cannot say more about Tamera at AZ Petal Pusher. She never ceases to amaze me with her creative designs!! |
| I LOVE this photo stephen took. There is just something so whimsical about it. |
| I loved this little detail that Lauren and Garrett made. The Happily Ever After Ale was a hit! |
| Lauren's dad Scott LOVED this little cookies on the right. ... I might add that we tried one and we LOVE them! |
| I love Lauren's funky dancing :) |
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