I had such a delightful time working with Kim on her wedding, it was a great way for us to get to know one another more. Roger has gone to the church that my husband and I attend for years now [maybe longer than we have] and we initially met through Josh [husband] playing guitar and me singing with him for the services. Roger became the leader of the music ministry and we spent a good amount of time with him throughout the past two years- but life gets hectic and things get in the way and with weddings I stepped back from singing quite a bit. I met Kim a few times in the years past [as her and Roger are the perfect story of dating, breaking up, and then not being able to live without one another after re-connecting], but I really got to know her through helping her sort through the details of their homespun wedding day.

They decided to keep their event small and personal. Everyone there was close to the couple and it was a very intimate day in the end! I started by picking up the party’s personal flowers and meeting them at the lovely RSM lake near the house where they wed.

That little tiny boutonniere is for the ring bearer. Cuuuuuute!!

These are the first moments of them seeing one another all gussied up:

When I left the lake and arrived at the house, everything was almost all set up. The caterer had just arrived with the appetizers, the cake was just getting there, and their simple centerpieces were ready to go. Here’s a few pictures of their simple set up…

Their cake, pre-decorating. I LOVE this detailing!

The girls came down that sprial staircase on the side after starting out on the balcony…

Cake table [pre-cake]

Here’s the appetizer set up. The bride got them all a GREAT spread!

The gift table:

Kim set up the afternoon to be really laid back and more like a family event than anything. She had the guests arrive before her, and had the food out so they could sit and munch and hang out on the lawn. We then parted the guests and laid petals down to make an aisle to start the ceremony!

This is Jeremiah [Miah] and Heather. These are Roger’s kids and they are the BEST kids ever. Miah is 16 and Heather is 15 and they’re polite, courteous, loving and super sweet. He really raised ‘em well!

The lovely bride with her grandpa. He was so cute and sweet! He’d never walked anyone down the aisle before and was so pleased to do that for Kim!

I love the way Kim and Roger were holding hands…

While they were doing that, I was doing this [champange and cider so that we could go directly into the toasts]

Rings….

A reading by Roger’s sister toward the end of the ceremony was a perfect touch for their day!

Finally Mr. and Mrs.!!!!

Toasts…

Kim’s smile and laugh are infectious!

The beautiful cake moved outside onto the cake table:

After the ceremony the kids couldn’t WAIT to start picking up and throwing the rose petals. As a result, when it came time to have Kim and Roger dance, we opted to have them dance in the middle of the lawn and petals, as opposed to the patio area. It ended up really beautiful, and the kids loved it!

And of course the kids chipped in for photos with petals…

The bride could hardly wait to join in!

We fit some family pictures in during the reception

The best part about these pictures is that Kim did NOT want to do them, because she was afraid she’d get dropped. So of course Roger had to pretend he was dropping her….

Time for cake cutting [realize, that the whole event was about 3 hours total, so it all went very quickly!]

[Love those shadows on the wall!!]

They really got one another with the frosting on the cake. I mean, in their hair, up their noses, in their ears… I know they’re still finding frosting on their faces as we speak!!

Time to toss the bouquet, balcony style!!

Most of the guests were married so the bouquet and the garter were tossed to “health, wealth and prosperity”…

And yes, that is Josh in the background grasping for the garter. He didn’t catch it, but he put up a good fight! He was in charge of bringing the sound system and running the iPod for the ceremony and reception. I’m always thankful when I get to bring my husband along with me to events and especially when he’s there to do something seperate than I am! So, he got to be half guest, half vendor at this event. And well, so did I pretty much. All in all, it was a really great event! No snags at all. Everything turned out perfectly and the evening went so smoothly.

Kim and Roger [and Miah and Heather], have so much fun getting settled in and relaxing after the wedding. And Kim, let Roger convince you to take that cruise!!!

And we’re going to Disneyland. If you have a pass, you can try and run into us! We’ll probably be there all evening [but not until evening!].

You all know how much I love him, right? I got schmoop-city in my anniversary post, I don’t need to do it again here!

Another photographer, another day! Haha. It always kills me when photographers don’t blog, but that’s mainly because I’m so impatient. I can just imagine the gorgeous images that are going to come, and I tend to not want to wait for them! Well, in this case, the wait was definately worth it. I just got access to the images from Matt Kim Photography for Jennifer and Billy’s wedding that was in August. My breath was taken away. His photo-journalistic style is remarkable and I truly am thrilled to look through them! Here’s a few of my favorites…

I seriously have no idea how in the 30 minutes my husband was there, he manages have Matt snag a pic like this…

Jen’s expression is priceless!

Again with the priceless expressions…

[That's his sister]

Yep, that’s Trevor!

Again… :)

Okay, so it got a little longer than I intended but come on… I got 150 pictures! I’m like a kid in a candy store. My weakness is good photos! Anyhow, hope that you all enjoyed! Seeing as the season is almost officially over, I’ll be doing the best I can to keep adding blogs and photos on a weekly basis [if not more, knowing me].

Thanks for keeping me in the loop guys, love the photos!!

I am always SO excited when I can track down sneak peeks at my girls’ pro photos. Luckily, Karla hired two photographers for her event and one of them has a blog [which are truly my favorite things ever for photographers and I seriously stalk most of the photographer's blogs that I've worked with- and some that I haven't!]. Anyhow… through Sarah K. Chen Photography and her blog, I found this gorgeous image of Karla from the wedding on Saturday. She looks breath taking and it absolutely captures the evening! Enjoy!!

Well, the elements were stacking up against me BIG TIME for Karla’s wedding! From a few hours after her rehearsal Thursday night, I had caught the stomach flu. Friday was terrible, I kept anxiously obsessing over how much I needed it to be a 24-hour bug that it was more torture than any other sickness! So, for Saturday I called in the troops and had my husband, my assistant, and my mom come down to help set up the reception in anticipation that I wouldn’t want to move very much at all that day. I can’t tell if I felt better or if I was just BUSY enough to not think about it, but we made it threw and I think hardly anyone even found out about me being sick [besides the people watching me pop pepto bismol and chase it with 7-Up all evening! Haha!]. And, on TOP of that, I lost my camera charger- so no digital camera. You’ll notice that the quality of these pictures seem… well, disposable! And you’re right. But, 4 cameras later, I have something to blog about. The real story of my blog is this: Karla was SUCH a radiant and amazingly fun bride. She is the epitomy of being able to catch the pitfalls of the day with grace, and she was determined to enjoy her day and relax. She looked gorgeous doing it, too!

Let’s start out at the church! Here’s what the church looked like [unplanned event #1- the girls made pomanders for the pews but decided they didn't look right in there, so they scrapped the idea and the church went without decoration. Did the guests know? Never! It was a gorgeous church built in the 1800's and was perfect for Karla and Luis's traditional mexican mass- bilingual only because the priest didn't speak spanish very well!]:

And here’s my beautiful bride waiting for her walk down the aisle:

She had this beautiful basket of programs at the ceremony! Her colors were “fall colors” which were these gorgeous dark hues of burgundy and chocolate and then a pop of coral that she added in with the flowers and flower girls!

Here’s a few more of the ceremony and Karla. I tried my best to get a few of the Mariachi band that played the ceremony- who were AMAZING- but they didn’t allow flash in the church and you could tell my little Kodak wasn’t cutting it!

I didn’t get to stay the whole length of the ceremony, because I was headed over to the reception site [Villa Del Sol, in downtown Fullerton] but the Mariachi stayed and played 2 songs afterwards for the guests outside the church! Another ceremony hiccup the guests were never the wiser to? Karla had forgotten the lasso that was to be tied around her and Luis during the ceremony- what they did was clasp together all of the bridesmaid’s necklaces and voila! Impromptu lasso, nobody knew, and it worked out perfectly! But, as I said before… onto the reception I went!

Details, details, details! Karla had some of my FAVORITES worked into her big day! I didn’t get pictures of all of them, so the ones I didn’t get, I’ll just have to mention. Hopefully her photographers faired better than I did- I know they did, I saw them snapping away all night and I was so envious…

These strung lights were a MUST HAVE for Karla. We both fell in love with some pictures we saw from another couple who tied the knot at Villa Del Sol, and because of that Luis and some friends came over earlier in the day and strung them across! What a great sport he was. I have no idea how he did it, but the site just kept getting more beautiful the later it got, and the lights made such a huge difference!

The best part about this site is that it’s a 2-story open courtyard, so the 2nd story was a huge terrace area overlooking the reception below. Karla put a great lounge area up there, the caterers provided a few tables and chairs, and we put Karla’s “Sweet Shoppe” up there as well! Speaking of…..

Even with SO much candy, the guests loved this table up quickly! It was such a hit! Karla’s takeout boxes with monograms were SO cute and her “love is sweet” framed poem complimented everything perfectly! Now, let’s head back downstairs.

This is the gorgeous table set up. Karla actually BOUGHT chair sashes from LA and used them as runners. They were perfect! And they really brought a great splash of color. But, another snag in the night’s events was the wind! We broke 3 centerpieces while placing them out because the wind would knock them off the tables! We left the few we could and quickly improvised to change the centerpices to more candles and less shattering glassware… Karla took it like a champ, with a shrug and said “Oh wel! There’s nothing we can do, you know?”. It still looked gorgeous and had the same dramatic effect. In fact, one of the caterers said it was the most beautiful this courtyard had ever looked!

Karla provided dancing shoes for tired feet:

They had one of their GORGEOUS engagement pictures framed to sign:

Their gorgeous albums for their polaroid photo-guestbook [and, um, half of my husband's finger!]. Oh, and those little “leaves” are actually sticky on the back and made for scrapbooking, so the guests could use them to attach their photos!

Their escort cards were individual wine bottles and they were AMAZING. Of course, this is the best shot of them that I got. Bummer! But, you can imagine!

Here’s a terrible shot of her gorgeous little cocktail menus [which even had some helpful info on it, and invited the guests to stay until 12am and celebrate Mexican independance day with them!]

Her cake… I loved. It was an interesting shape, it was elegant, it was simple! Everything I love in a cake, and of course, it had a monogram!

Here’s a picture of the head table for you. Since Karla didn’t have a centerpiece planned but had bought a ton of stuff for me to use “at my discretion”- my favorite!- I came up with this:

I think the one GREAT thing that you didn’t get to see was Karla’s “while you’re here” cards, which detailed all of the things she wanted her guests to do [take a polaroid of themselves, lounge in the lounge area, get their sweet on, sign their photo frame, and of course shake their booties!!!]. I actually had one of these at my own wedding, and for Karla it worked perfectly because she really had a site with a great layout and it ensured that everyone knew how to utilize it!

Now, onto the night’s events. First thing’s first, the grand entrance:

And into their first dance…

Somewhere in the midst they fit in some food, but were quickly off to do some table visits…

Take note of that bouquet in Karla’s hand. Not HER bouquet, the other one. Karla and Luis are going to Europe for their honeymoon [Spain and Italy, specifically] and her co-workers made her a gorgeous boquet of Euros for them to take with them! I loved it!!

Time for toasts!

Following that, Luis made a touching toast to his bride, detailing how he knew he wanted to marry a girl like her and when he found her she blew everything out of the water! She really is everything Luis says she is, and more! They make such a lovely couple and Jordan, their son, already proves that they make cute kids together!!

Here’s a few shots of the father/daughter and mother/son dances:

And they followed those with a very special SURPRISE and choreographed SALSA dance! Let me tell you, Karla and Luis can work it- and they DID!

There were SO many little things in the evening that I missed! From the mini veils that Karla’s mom bought for the single ladies to wear during the bouquet toss [and they LOVED], to the traditional mexican elements like dressing up the groom as a housewife during one song… All in all [and between the LIVE salsa band and the DJ] the crowd danced their booties off and had a GREAT time doing it. The dance floor was PACKED and the caterers and I were moving tables out of the way left and right to make it bigger. Nothing says people are having fun more than that! All in all, and most importantly, you could see in their faces that Karla and Luis were having a great time! My very last picture is of them cutting their cake. And I must admit, I’ve never seen a more perfect slice of cake cut at a wedding, ever! Maybe the shape of the cake was to their advantage? It’s hard to say, but either way, that was one beautiful slice… before it ended up all over their faces, you know. :)

To Karla and Luis, you two get some REST and RELAXATION before you come home to Jordan! And I want to see some real pictures!

Here’s a little schmoopy and personal blog for everyone!

Tomorrow is my 4 year anniversary. I really think the reason I love working with brides and weddings so much, is rooted in my relationship I have with my loving husband Josh. He is such an inspiration for me! We were both so young when we got married [21 in fact], but our love has learned to grow and change and truly LOVE admist everything that comes with being married young. Josh has alway taught me to shoot for my dreams- he believed in me from the very begining, even when things seemed overwhelming and beyond my skill. His support for me makes me want to support and love him more every day- and I truly believe that is what life is all about. He’s my partner. He’s my very best friend. I know that I am fortunate beyond my years, beyond my deserving and way beyond my means. I am so thankful for the lessons that he has taught me in these past four years [even if he doesn't know it] and I’m so greatful for the lessons we’ve learned and trials we’ve gone through together.

Josh- you are the most kind hearted, giving, selfless person I know! It astounds me daily and I feel so blessed to have made such a good decision for myself. Sometimes I feel like we couldn’t be more different- but more than that, I feel like we couldn’t compliment anyone else better than we compliment one another. I love you, I love us.

Here’s some pictures that I pulled from a friend’s anniversary party last December: