Last Saturday Ryan and I had the privilege of shooting the wedding of Glorianna & Brad.  The first time we met with this adorable couple, we both admired how genuine and sweet and completely in love they were.  I remember saying to Ryan as we were leaving the meeting, “I totally loved them!  It will be so sad if we don’t get to shoot their wedding!”  Guess they loved us too, since we DID :-)  Ok, enough about us.  Let’s get to the good stuff!  I should just warn you though, it’s probably going to be a long one!  We REALLY loved this wedding . . .

The day began at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa in Litchfield Park, AZ where Glorianna was getting ready.  It was very important to this couple to get married at their church, but they also wanted a really great backdrop for their portraits.  They decided to see each other before the ceremony and shoot all the pre-ceremony shots at the resort.  Future brides and grooms: this is perfect option if you love your church, but it doesn’t quite meet your aesthetic hopes and dreams for your wedding day!  You really CAN have both.

The dress. 

I have to say Glorianna and her bridesmaids were really fun to watch during all the preparation.  Lots of smiles and laughter!  (And the mimosas were a nice touch too :-)

Glorianna made a comment about how great it was to be the bride and have everyone doting on you all day.  She said she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to her regular life :-)  Can’t say I blame her!

Getting into the dress - always a big moment.  I just love the way this shot turned out . . . 

The shoes :-)

One of our favorite parts of shooting weddings is getting to witness the bride and groom seeing each other for the first time :-)  I typically escort the bride to a pre-planned place where Ryan is waiting with the groom.  On our way to meet Brad, Glorianna was so excited and trying to fight back happy tears the whole time . . .

I think it’s so cute that brides have such a hard time getting around in their dresses at first and then a few hours later they’re dancing like crazy at the reception!  Seriously though, this dress weighed a ton on the hanger.  It’s hard to get around normally in something like that!  We’ll call these next two the “taming of the ballgown” :-)  Glorianna managed to look adorable and graceful despite the extra pounds of dress!

Some portraits of the love birds :-)  

The bridal party - are these not the cutest bridesmaids dresses EVER?

After all the portraits, we headed out to Calvary Chapel for the ceremony.  Glorianna decided to add a veil for this part of the day.  Gotta say, we loved the results.  Isn’t she such a gorgeous bride?

STUNNING!

Their ceremony was very sweet and personal.

Then it was off to Windstar Gardens Event Center to PARTY the night away!

A sweet shot from the first dance.

Some great moments from the father daughter dance.

And what wedding reception is complete without a little Vegas style gaming?  LOVE IT!

We decided we needed a bit of Blackjack for their ring shot too!

We’ve been experimenting for a little while with using off camera lighting at our receptions and this was the first wedding we decided to roll it out officially.  Check out some of the AWESOME results!

Just one last shot of the gorgeous couple :-)  One of our MANY favorites . . . 

Brad and Glorianna - we feel truly blessed to have been a part of your special day!  We wish you all the love and happiness in the world and we’re sure God has many blessings in store for you both!

**** CLICK HERE to check out a slideshow with a ton more great images from their day!

Don’t forget to leave us some comment love below :-)

We just finished up the album design for Elizabeth & Kevin’s Wedding!  This gorgeous couple was married back in September at the Mesa Temple.  We had such an awesome time shooting bridal portraits with them the week before their wedding too!  They had so many great portraits between the bridal session and their wedding day it was SO HARD to choose which ones should go in their album.  Seriously!  A standard 40 page wedding album usually has about 100 photos in it, but man we probably could have easily done a whole second album with the photos from these two!

CLICK HERE to see the rest of their album design and keep in mind that the actual book will be 10 x 10 inches when closed so the photos will be A LOT bigger in real life.

*** A quick note to future brides and grooms: doing a bridal portrait session BEFORE your actual wedding day is SUCH a great way to ensure you’ll have plenty of beautiful images of you and your beloved.  You spend a lot less time in front of the camera on your big day AND you get to have an endless choice of great locations for you and your sweetie in your formal wear!  Besides who DOESN’T want an excuse to get to be that gorgeous for TWO days instead of just one!  Something to think about . . .

Anyone who knows us well, knows that we LOVE movies.  We have over 400 DVDs on our shelves (that’s right, shelves plural - there’s three of them).  We love pretty much all genres: romance, comedy, classics, thrillers, etc . . . except for scary movies.  I have nightmares :-(

Anyhow, for Halloween this year, we decided to imitate a few of our favorite on screen characters.  We really didn’t have many trick-or-treaters so we decided on an impromptu photo shoot to entertain ourselves . . .

I was Holly Go-lightly (Audrey Hepburn) from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

And Ryan was going for Lloyd Dobler (John Cusak) from “Say Anything”.  We didn’t have the props, back ground or really even the right costume to pull that off, so we opted to let Photoshop set the scene :-)  Aren’t we silly?

He definitely has the brooding movie star look going on though - very James Dean, right?

Ahh, photographers left to their own devices - what can I say?  We love the silliness :-)

Our only challenge was keeping this one out of every photo:

Happy belated Halloween everybody!