Sometimes it works out to do engagement photographs before the wedding with a destination wedding. Other times, it doesn’t. Jess met me for her bridal photographs in Los Angeles, but TJ couldn’t come. So we took an hour the morning after the wedding (yes! we were all a little groggy) to capture some images of the two of them together. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: I love how relaxed and sweetly intimate post-wedding portrait sessions always are. Really, it’s the recipe for perfect portraits …
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That’s a wrap! Now, we are drawing near to Jess and TJ’s first anniversary and I am quietly wishing them, as I wish all my clients, a marriage as marvelous as—or more marvelous than—their wedding!
photographs: Gia Canali
The great thing about bridal portrait sessions, as opposed to weddings, is that you have the real luxury of having time to make portraits, slowly. I mean: I love the challenge and the rush of making portraits happen in the swirl of the events and obligations of a wedding day (what wedding photographer doesn’t?!). And Jess’s session was slower than most because we intentionally sought to make images on our slowest, most deliberate cameras.
Bridal sessions are about the bride and certainly also about her exquisite refinery. Jess’s dress was designed and lovingly crafted by Suzanne Hanley of Atelier des Modistes. Sue is a genius designer and I feel lucky to count her among my friends. I particularly love the lace chevrons (though, seriously, I can’t fathom how much time it took her and her team to make those) and the bustle, which reminds me so much of the wild, wild west. Jess’s bridal session is also featured {here} on 100 Layer Cake today, with an interview from Jess about the custom dressmaking process.
Neither one of us could have known that Jess’s wedding day would bring rain (or rainbows) and mud or that the slow moments in the day could be counted on the fingers of two hands, so I am extra grateful we made time early in the summer before her wedding to make these portraits.
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Jess found other value in making these images. This is what she wrote:
“I thought it was really helpful to do the portrait session before, because it was an excellent introduction to you and Matt, and how you like to work. It was also great for me to hear some tips from you on posture, how to stand, how to act, etc., before the “main event,” so to speak. It was certainly a little more challenging to take photos alone, as opposed to how much more natural and easy it felt when I was with TJ. But I think for people who haven’t been photographed much before [their weddings], it’s a great introduction. Plus seeing these initial proofs, I could then say to myself—well, I like it when I smile like this or that, and I love how my hair and makeup looks in these photos, and so on—so it was a great dry run overall.”
photographs: Gia Canali
gown: Sue Hanley, Atelier des Modistes, whose little shop in San Francisco I featured awhile back; hair and makeup: Sharon Tabb.
After Jess and TJ’s guests thoroughly wore themselves out in the field day tournament, everyone dressed up for a tented rehearsal dinner party. It was the weekend’s most formal event. Guests dined in a tent that opened up on a little pond and it was embellished with dressy-up, woodsy decor and lots of sweet, handmade touches. We especially loved all the wooden table numbers, the tree-bark wrapped “vases,” and the escort card heart made of stones with each guest’s name.
{click any image for a closer view}
We stole Jess and TJ away for a few minutes, just before sunset for photographs along the dirt road out to the horse pasture (and spa!) at C Lazy U. Taking a few minutes here and there out of a busy wedding weekend schedule—particularly in moments with perfect light—to make some beautiful portraits always has a huge impact on the overall coverage of your wedding. We’ll hurry you back to your guests, promise …
I think getting great wedding photographs is one part trained eyeballs (by which I mean vision) and two parts time-management, both on the part of the photographers and on the part of the couple. One little great time-management helper with multi-day weddings is to space out the group photographs across the events. Not every family photograph needs to be on the wedding day. We photographed Jess and TJ’s extended families separately at the rehearsal and then TJ requested this lodge-style combined family photograph, which I just love.
Jess and TJ’s friends and families also made almost all their toasts at the rehearsal dinner. Except for a quick welcome toast from the bride’s father at the wedding reception, this freed them up on the wedding day for an uninterrupted party (!) … a fantastic bonus since it always goes by too too quickly, even when you have four days of celebrating. This was a sweet way for everyone to get to know each other, too.
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The event is also featured {here} on 100 Layer Cake! Come back tomorrow for more from Jess and TJ’s wedding day!
photographs: Gia Canali
event design: Duet Events (the bride’s design company); planning, Stacy McCain Events; venue and catering, C Lazy U Ranch; florals: Lisa Anderson, Sweet Pea Flowers; dessert (aka tower of awesomeness), Shamane’s Bake Shoppe, Boulder CO.
Those of you who have been reading the blog a long time know that it’s pretty rare for me to feature a whole wedding (that’s not what my blog is about!), but this wedding is going to be an exception, multiple times over to go with the myriad events that made up Jess and TJ’s celebration. When Jess first called me about photographing her wedding at a guest ranch in Granby, Colorado, I was excited to return to the landscape of my youth. My parents had a tiny horse ranch in the mountains nearby when I was a little girl, and I’ve always thought Colorado possesses some kind of real magic. I thought the events of the weekend, even the ones I wasn’t slated to photograph, sounded so fun—a hoedown, a poker tournament, field day, a tented dinner party, a wedding reception in a rodeo arena—but I had no idea how exhilarating it would be to show up to an event where I would end up shooting in my mom’s old cowgirl boots and it actually made sense (really, was practically required). Nor did I realize the kind of camaraderie Jess and TJ would be cultivating amongst their friends and family before the wedding. So often two families can’t really get to know each other before a wedding and, at least when you think of a wedding as a big send off into married life—a show of support from a couple’s community—there’s no better way to get everybody really “in” on the send off than to get folks together for days of fun together.
The hoedown was the welcome party. And it was a real hoedown, complete with bluegrass music, bbq, lots of dancin’, a big bonfire, and cowboys “branding” guests’ boots and belts with the C Lazy U brand. I have to think that this is one of the best weddings to be a guest at that I’ve ever been a part of. 100 Layer Cake is featuring the wedding all this week, too, and their post for the hoedown can be found {here}.
photographs: Gia Canali
event coordination / production: Stacy McCain Events, SF; event design: Duet Events (Jess’s wedding design company!); location: C Lazy U Ranch in Granby, CO; florals: Lisa Anderson, Sweet Pea Flowers, Denver; delish silverware sleeves, Miss Pickles Press.
Jess & TJ’s Colorado ranch wedding weekend is featured in all the local editions of Brides magazines (Southern California, Northern California, Colorado—of course!—as well as New York, Chicago, DC, Atlanta, et cetera)! Hooray! So pick up a copy at a newsstand near you. The article shows insight into how Jess and TJ planned what turned out to be a pretty incredible three day celebration for themselves and their friends and families. This epic wedding brings to mind the phrase “one for the books” and we’ll be sharing lots of different images on the blog here this upcoming week. (It’s also featured on Brides.com and can be found here, if you’d like a peek).
{click for a closer look!}
With Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, I thought I’d share a tear from Brides magazine, which just came in the mail. It offers some great ideas for honoring your mother on your wedding day. I, for one, certainly wish that I’d walked down the aisle with both my father and my mother. (Honestly, my husband and I agree that if we had one thing to do over, we would have honored all of our parents more at our wedding. It seems sometimes like the father of the bride is the only one who comes with “built in” moments in the spotlight.) And I love this mother-daughter dance tradition (suggestion #15), though I’ve seen it only once … at the wedding pictured above.
If you’d like to see more photos from this wedding, we featured it awhile back {here}.
photo: Gia Canali
This adorable wedding can be found over on {snippet & ink} today, and {here’s} a link!
Someday soon, I might post more images … might. I don’t want to make promises I just can’t keep!
It rained all day and all night at this wedding, without ever letting up. We made some of our only real outdoor portraits under the canopy of this stand of redwood trees, which was somehow dry, even after two solid days of driving rain. I love how the bride looks like she’s floating above the forest floor (and also kind of glowing!), like a wood fairy or a nymph.
The truth is that you never really can do anything about the weather. Just be ready to go with it. This couple had envisioned lots of portraits in the fields and forests near the reception venue. (And I had, too!) The weather, unfortunately, made that pretty impossible, not to mention totally impractical. Plan B was to run outside during a break in the rain. It never happened. So … we all adjusted our expectations and made the best portraits we could in the few spots we could reasonably get to. Although I absolutely love all the photos that show the rainy day for what it was, the images from this series that seem to transport the bride far from her rainy wedding day seem extra special.
photo: Gia Canali
