Monday, April 30, 2007

Our little gold star

I feel like a second grader who was just given a metallic gold star sticker to put on my chart. Check our "Good Job" sticker below:



Woo~hoo! The official stamp of approval from The Knot. For those of you who missed our blog a couple of months ago, we were selected through recommendations from brides in the area, so this means a lot to us! We are incredibly honored!

Check out The Knot's Best Of Weddings issue. It hits newsstands today! We are listed in the Southern California section and also keep an eye out for our super cute ad designed by Jasmine Star.

Details from our last couple of weddings coming this week!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

off to sacramento we go...

We are headed up to Sacramento for the wedding of our wonderful web designer, BSmith Designs. It is going to be a beautiful and fun wedding in a barn at a winery just outside of Sacramento. I can't wait! This is the second time in a month I have headed up to norcal for a wedding! I am happy to be driving up this time because I don't have to figure out a way to smuggle my emergency kit through security :) They don't look kindly on scissors, razor blades and sewing kits.

When I get back next week, I will post about this wedding, as well as Sarah & Partick's wedding, which was held at the end of March in Lodi. Have a great week everyone!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

A Beachy St Patty's Day Wedding


On a beautiful St. Patrick's Day, Stacie & Dana became husband & wife. It was a fun day filled with laughs and lots of beachy touches. They were married at St. Simon & Jude and had their reception at the Hilton Waterfront in Huntington Beach. Both the church coordinator & the site coordinator were great! So nice & easy to work with. That always makes my job 10 times easier and more enjoyable!

Stacie & Dana join a couple of our other recent pairs who were lucky enough to meet online! They are such a fun couple- very easy going with an evident love of life. The wedding was beautiful with a lot of personal touches. Stacie decided to go with a classic black & white color scheme, with touches of sage green. There were a few fun St Paddy's day surprises thrown in at the end of the night, including ridiculous hats & emerald green boas paraded around the dance floor.

Now, I have to give a big high-five to Stacie. She was one of the most organized and prepared brides I have ever worked with. She made pretty much everything herself, including the centerpieces, placecards and even the flower pens used to sign the guest book & photo matte. Not only did she do an incredible job making these things, they were done weeks, even months before the wedding! Everything was boxed up and labeled for me. She even put the adorable starfish placecards into ordered individual bags broken up into letters of the alphabet. When someone is as organized as I am, if not more, it always makes me smile & sigh with relief at the same time!

Below are some of the wonderful photos taken by Rene' and Jay of The Storykeeper Photographer. Not only are the pictures beautiful, but they were a pleasure to work with! Check out their website to see some more of their work.






These placecards are so cute! Take a tip from Stacie: If you are making your placecards, be sure to design them in such a way that you can get most of the work done prior to knowing the table assignments. She made the tags using a square of cardstock, and then gluing on a small strip of green paper with the guest's name along with another strip of green paper with the table assignment below. She was able to get the placecards done weeks ahead of time, and then just glued on the table assignments once the rsvp's were in and the table assignments had been done. It will save you a lot of stress in those final weeks!


The beautiful and tasty cake was made by the Great Dane Bakery. One of my favorites!


The favors were king-sized Hershey bars, wrapped in various styles of paper, all in the color scheme. Stacie got the paper from one of my favorite stores, Paper Source. Brides- this is an amazing resource. They have the most incredible paper, as well as favor boxes, idea kits, and more than you can imagine. They also have colored labels, which are great for customizing favors, such as Stacie's above.





A great guestbook idea! Shutterfly can make photo guest books with pages filled with blank lines for your guests to leave notes. You can use engagement photos or fun photos that span your relationship. Much more fun and memorable than a normal guest book.



I included this photo because it makes me laugh. This is a photo of the Groom's parents. They were adorable! First of all- the mother's hat is amazing. At the end of the night, she kept asking the photographer to get some photos of the two of them. She especially liked this pose. Now- look closely. Who can you see in the mirror? Me- ruining the mother of the groom's idyllic photo. Way to go Courtney!

Another touch that Stacie included, which I love, is displaying wedding photos of the parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. She made labeled cards explaining who was who. The guests loved it! It is a special way to include your family heritage into your day.

Other vendors (all of them get an A+ in my book):

So Cal DJ's
Today's the Day Weddings (videography)
The Spiraled Stem (florist)
Carina Lindgreen (make-up)
Natalie Buketov (hair)
White Rose Limo

Monday, April 16, 2007

Happy Taxes!

I hope you all are not having to deal with post office lines today. I will be momentarily- hooray for waiting to mail taxes until the last day! Honestly- I am just blown away that I got them done in time and didn't have to file an extension. I cannot take even half of the credit though. Here is a big shout out to my Uncle Ray- taxman extraordinaire! Also, for the record- owning your own business + having a spouse in ministry= extremely confusing taxes. I miss the days of getting a refund!

Anyway- enough about taxes. I am smiling for a bigger reason than having my taxes done. Contrary to popular belief, we are not having twins! After an Easter sunday filled with comments about how big my stomach is and assertions that we most definitely were going to have twins, we rushed into the Doctor's office to get her opinion. Upon hearing that we do have twins in our family, she rushed us in for an ultra-sound (YES! We were looking for any excuse to see this baby before the 20th week!). You cannot imagine our relief when the technician assured us that there was only one baby. And, for any of you who know my husband, I am sure you can imagine his child-like awe seeing a fetus for the first time. With a smile that could not be made any larger, he was nearly jumping up and down. It truly was an amazing experience- made the whole thing much more of a reality. I cannot believe that there is a baby growing inside of me! It is such a miracle! Only 7 more weeks and we'll get to find out if it is a boy or a girl!

In the meantime, if you look at my stomach and wonder why I am so big in the beginning of my second trimester, I am, as my doctor said it, "petite. With nowhere for this baby to go but out" :)

Sunday, April 15, 2007

I'm a stalker

I admit it. Happily! I love to scour the blogs of my client's photographers, eagerly awaiting a post that bears their names. Engagement photo sessions are so fun! I love seeing how photographers are able to catch the personalities of my clients in fun, artistic & beautiful ways.

Check out the engagement session of Endren & Caohien, a fun couple from Texas who are going to have a beautiful, tradition-filled wedding this June. Their photos, by Michael Norwood, are great! Check them out at on his blog: Endren & Caohien on mnphotography.blogspot.com

Monday, April 09, 2007

Lazy....

Happy Easter Everyone! (well..technically, it's the day after Easter, but hey!)

So.... I've been really bad with keeping my blog updated. Really bad. That ends today! After a wonderful weekend of celebrating the life and resurrection of Christ, I spent a lazy day relaxing with my family. At the end of my lazy day, I realized that I had been extremely lazy with my blog. Now, I absolutely love blogs. I'm addicted to the wonderful blogs of a few of my photographer friends. However, I'm horrible with my own. I always think of great things to put on here and I never get around to it.

So, all of this to say- I promise to write more often! I usually wait for photos to post about my recent weddings, but now I'm going to gush about them right away while the joy and the details are fresh in my head.

So- look out! Here we come!