I LOVE DIY weddings! When a couple takes time to put themselves into a wedding, the wedding is always more fun. This wedding was full of fun details including hand made cloth napkins in my favorite colors yellow + gray. And who doesn’t love balloons? Hand made origami aisle markers? Yes, please! Cute little bird tattoos (real) for the bride and MOH? Um, hell yes! They even wrote their own vows full of sweet “why I like you” what-nots!  Photo booth – a huge success. You should add one to your wedding collection! An important word of advice for you DIY brides: be a bride on your wedding day! Amanda + Corey smartly hired Ventana Wedding & Events Productions to handle the set up and day of coordination. They did an amazing job at putting Amanda’s designs on display allowing the bride + groom to have a stress free not to mention kick ass time at their wedding. I am so glad I had the opportunity to help out She-n-He photograph Amanda + Corey’s wedding at Vintage Villas. They could not have been a nicer couple!

Here is a look at real honest to goodness love. Meet newlyweds, Victoria + Taylor. Their story is a sweet one. We spent the morning and afternoon together to get these frames. I approached this session a little differently than most. I really wanted to explore something new – the intimacy of relationship. My goal was to get the couple to a real place of comfort and really get them to open up to one another in my presence. I can make any two people look happy together. We all have our tricks and ways of putting people at ease but I wanted this to be real. No staging on my part. Being vulnerable is a difficult thing to do. Most people…ok everyone…feels nervous once the camera shows up. It takes a real commitment to get to this place. Every part of this session had meaning. We spent time just hanging out in their most private space, their home, forgoing typical locations which had little to no meaning to them. We explored their neighorhood with their awesome yellow tandem bike which was a gift from the person who married them. They talked about the significance of the bike. During their pre-marriage counseling sessions their pastor asked them to best describe their relationship. They said they were always together. Never apart. So on their wedding day, their pastor presented them with a personal gift, a tandem bicycle. It had belonged to him and his own wife for nearly 20+ years. He wanted it to be a reminder to them of when their love was young and new. A reminder of how they needed to stick together for marriage is a long journey.

Lastly, they had a small request to recreate a photo of Victoria’s grandparents. How could I say no to such an awesome idea? We went to the tennis courts and I posed them just like in the photo I had seen so lovingly displayed in their bedroom. If you know me, I have a soft spot for the grandparents. I think it turned out great!

This kind of session takes a great deal of trust and patience. I hope they enjoyed being part of this as much as I loved photographing them.

Finally caught up with my editing for Ms. B & little H. Buffy and I have known each other since middle school and we were also college roommates. Now she’s married and has a sweet little girl named, Haddy, who just turned two. It’s crazy how time has flown by. When I think back at some of our crazy moments and see her now with little H., it’s really hard to believe how much we’ve grown up. True adults now. Here is an old school photo of us from Eeyore’s Birthday Party. Good times. I really wish I had the one of us in our old apartment where I’ve got on B’s superman t-shirt. Love that photo. We were so hot Back to present day. Grown ups. Here is a taste of our session. Little H is a doll!! Thanks, B for letting me tag along with you two.