my bouquet

i posted a few weeks ago about our fabulous florist, sweet pea flower company. well i wanted to share a sample of michelle's work, a prototype of my bouquet. michelle and i talked several times about what i wanted, and she captured it perfectly. here are a few shots...








the main flowers are pink ranunculus, pink roses (ballet slipper), cream roses, cream liseanthus (?) and hypernicum berries. the cool brown things are fiddlehead ferns. can't wait for the wedding!

congratulations james!

after two long years of arduous studying, giving up weekends of fun for hours of cramming for exams, james has officially graduated!!! to celebrate, i got him a little surprise, something he had been wanting for a very long time...don julio real tequila. for those of you who know james, he is a tequila aficionado and has a huge, and now more complete collection.












and now its a 2-month break before he starts his masters program, just enough time to get married and go on our honeymoon :) congrats james, i am so proud of you!

second time is a charm: gage

as a present to his good friend, one of our grooms who you might remember from last year asked us to do newborn portraits. we were super-excited to do these pictures, thinking of all the cool things we could do with the marine corps uniform and the baby. but alas, with babies, some things are just not meant to be. though we tried and tried, we couldn't get little baby gage to stop crying, except for a couple shots.







so we told alison and stefan that we would gladly reshoot the pictures, and 6 months later, we had magic. gage is super-photogenic, loves to smile, adores his daddy (and his mommy of course!) and is just an all-around great baby.









gage is really into his tongue right now, we couldn't keep it in his mouth for most of the shoot, but its adorable...



plus, alison and dave live in this great house that has this amazing natural landscaping--this was all literally steps away from the front door.








finally, we moved back inside to avoid the rain, and got the perfect family photo...




gage, we're looking forward to seeing you again soon, thanks for being such a great baby this time around :)

wedding: shaun and rinda

we had the pleasure of meeting shaun and rinda last year, as a referral from one of our bridal portrait clients. shaun and rinda are both in the navy and soon after their wedding, will be departing to new tours overseas, so we felt extremely fortunate to be able to capture their wedding memories for them. family and friends, to be notified when the rest of the pictures are online, please click here to sign the guestbook.

the wedding was held at the wiens family cellars in temecula, and it was absolutely gorgeous. although the winery was packed when we got there (what recession?!?), it quickly cleared out as the ceremony time approached, so shaun and rinda were left with the entire barrel and tasting rooms all to themselves.

we spent a little time before the festivities capturing all the getting ready moments...







the beautiful rings...



when shaun saw rinda for the first time, he looked surprised and happy, seeing her with a gorgeous dress, makeup and quite a hot little piece of bling...



we ventured out into the muddy vineyard for a few pics before heading inside...






shaun looking very much like he owns this winery...




we moved into the barrel room for the ceremony, and we loved the fact that the wine was flowing before the ceremony began, what a great way to make sure guests enjoyed themselves!








we snapped a few quick pics of the whole group and then spent time mingling with the guests, capturing a few moments like this one along the way...






following the ceremony, the barrel room was quickly transformed into a gorgeous reception venue, with tons of candles and warmth...






keeping with the navy tradition, shaun and rinda cut the cake with a huge sword--i just hope the cake topper isn't indicative of shaun's feelings about marriage!










although shaun's toast was thoughtful and funny, rinda clearly had rehearsed hers for many months, as it brought tears and laughter to everyone in the room--i am pretty sure that had there been a hollywood director in the room, we would be hearing the same amazing words in the next love story






shaun and rinda, we are so honored that we got the chance to capture your wedding memories for you and we wish you fair winds and following seas on your newest adventures abroad. we look forward to catching up at gulf coast grill when you are back in town!

lindsay and michael: engaged!

we took a chance a few weeks ago and rescheduled our engagement session with lindsay and michael, keeping our fingers crossed that when we did meet, the weather would be nice. although the clouds looked ominous in the morning, by later afternoon it was gorgeous. we met lindsay and michael down in bird rock, a cute little community between pacific beach and la jolla. we spent some time walking around the neighborhood and just letting lindsay and michael be adorable. although they both swore that they had not done professional pictures before, i think they were lying, what do you think?










i love lindsay's boots, so sassy...






i love when we catch the little unexpected smiles...




its always fun to get our couples to strike a pose, love the tattoo here...




and sorry michael, lindsay gets 2 different poses featured because she just looks so darn hot! everything is working here, the hair, the smile, the pose, love it!






and then a nice, not-too-prom-y portrait...




next we headed down to the beach at windansea, where the clouds were literally sitting on the water somewhere way out there and the marine layer moved in, so we didn't get the gorgeous sunset, but we did get some pretty awesome beach pics...















lindsay and michael, thanks for being amazing models, we had such a good time walking around bird rock and la jolla and look forward to your wedding next month!