You may remember back in February when I shot Antonio and Shakera’s engagement photos in Atlanta on a day that was soooo cold my fingers were numb for half an hour after the shoot.  But we had fun, didn’t we guys?  These two are such fun to hang around with that even that cold weather didn’t dampen the shoot.  Well, their wedding day, back in May, was one of those stunning Atlanta spring days and they were just as fun to work with.  Shakera, a self described diva, just turns on the charm any time a camera is pointed in her direction and Antonio has a wonderfully dry wit (my favorite kind) and can switch from totally cool guy to life of the party in a split second.  Their wedding was at Pristine Wedding Chapel in Jonesboro, GA.  It’s a lovely venue with a lake and bridges and fountains.  We got a late start (although no worries, I’m always early), which happens at a lot of weddings.  Even with a good timeline, things don’t always go as quickly as everyone hopes.  I tell brides to schedule hair and make-up a good hour (at least!) earlier than they think they’ll need.  Those who heed my advice are always grateful in the long run.  For some reason, that always takes longer than the estimated time and pushes everything back.  But even at that, it worked out fine (it always does, btw).  The ceremony was beautiful.  The chapel at Pristine is exactly that, pristine.  It’s all white lights and marble and has a kind of magical look about it and the reception was an evening of true family togetherness.  They had a lot of love and support at that wedding and I wish them all the best in their future together!

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Erin & Bahair are one of those couples who both look so good it’s hard to take a truly bad photo of them.  So they were a total joy to photograph at their Peachtree City wedding.  Add to that the threat of rain on their wedding day was 70% at one point, then miraculously cleared to a stunning day with bright blue skies and all of the sudden, we went to perfect weather.   Erin’s Mom, Fran, had spent countless hours sewing the amazing white curtains that hung from the wedding arbor (the venue has some smaller ones, but they wanted longer ones that would billow – totally great call, as they looked stunning).  I could have stood for a long time and photographed the wedding site, alone, but add a nice looking wedding party and beautiful couple and it made for a great day of shooting.  Bahair is Egyptian and Erin is of Irish descent, so the reception had a number of very cool tributes to their origins, including a Gaelic prayer by Erin’s uncle.  Enjoy the photos and I’ll work at getting all the rest of my May weddings blogged soon!

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Leading off the Spring wedding season this year was Lindsey & Chris who got married at Kimball Hall in Roswell in late April.  It’s a lovely location, both inside and out, which was fortunate because a massive storm forced the entire day indoors.  But nothing was going to dampen the spirit of their wedding and the love that just poured from their family and friends.  The photo above was one of the loveliest moments I’ve ever witnessed at a wedding and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.  Lindsey’s mother was giving her toast and said that all she had ever wanted was a daughter (I’m tearing up just remembering it!) and that Lindsey had been the best daughter she could ever have imagined having.  It was so heartfelt and sincere and I loved the image above of Lindsey’s and Chris’s reaction.  Enjoy the rest of the photos from the day as it was a really beautiful one!

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So, in the spirit of seriously trying to get my blog up to date, I think it’s time I posted Michelle and Matt’s engagement photos from our Cator Woolford shoot last month (yeah, I did say last month).  They brought along Michelle’s dog, Ella, who very much enjoyed the gardens, even if she could have cared less about the photos!  Those who know me (and have been to my house for a consultation) know that I have three dogs (a small, medium and extra large) who sit somewhat patiently behind the french door to the kitchen while we meet.  There are permanent snout marks on the glass panes that just aren’t worth cleaning off every day.  So, as you can imagine, I’m always more than happy to have the couples I work with bring a long their canine friends to the engagement shoot.  Michelle number 2 (as I called her), Matt’s sister was kind enough to come along as doggie walker so we could get some shots that were a little more couple like.   Check back in the fall to see Michelle and Matt’s wedding photos from their wedding at Holy Spirit!

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Okay, so I admit to being the lamest blogger in the business…but I’m a busy photographer, so that must count for something, right?  I hope so.  Obviously, spring has sprung (and will be past altogether too soon for my taste) and it’s seriously wedding season in Atlanta.  It’s such a fun time of year for me.  I’ve been working with these couples for 6 months to a year, we’ve shot the engagement shoot and sometimes a bridal and boudoir as well and I’m getting to know them and feel really excited on their wedding day.  I sometimes even tear up a little as they walk down the aisle or have their first dance.  It’s true, I’m a hopeless romantic.  Why else would I go to multiple weddings a weekend?  Anyway, the couple in this post, Shan and Craig are lovely in every sense of the word.  We shot their engagement shoot at Shan’s parent’s house out in Conyers where Shan’s mother’s flowers were in full bloom.  It was such a nice evening and they even got to play a little basketball!  Craig is very very tall and Shan barely reaches his shoulder with 4″ heels.  They should be totally adorable on their wedding day.  Check back for more from them after their wedding at the Piedmont Room in early June.

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Spring has finally sprung in Atlanta and the flowers at Cator Woolford were in full bloom when we shot Meredith and Bert’s engagement photographs this week.  After all the rain and cold of the winter we were all three loving the warm springy day and we had a blast during their shoot.  As the sun set, we got this glorious pink sky that lit up behind them.  We shot until it was so dark my lens would no longer focus!  These guys are getting married in Westpoint, GA on May 22nd and then moving up to Washington DC where Bert has been for the last 18 months.  I’m looking forward to going down for the wedding which is being planned with lots of traditional family elements including a reception on Meredith’s parents’ property where Meredith grew up and where her Mom grew up before her.  But don’t expect photos of a backyard barbecue!  From the sounds of the planning, it’s going to be a beautiful affaire!  You can see photos from that in the weeks that follow the wedding.  Also, check back soon for Meredith’s bridal session.  She’s wearing her mother’s gown, so it should be a real treat!

Sara and Pierce and I have been trying to schedule their engagement session for months.  For one reason or another, it simply kept falling through.   We were ready to go last Friday night when Atlanta weather decided otherwise.  Luckily we were all available the next evening and although the weather was a bit sketchy, we decided to take the gamble.  We got a few raindrops throughout the shoot, but we got a wonderful surprise as well – a double rainbow!  It looked like it went from one side of Piedmont Park to the other.  While we didn’t great shots of both rainbows (the second being pretty faint) we got glorious ones of the main one.  In addition, the dramatic skies added a lot to the photos.  Fortunately, the park clears out very quickly when there’s a threat of rain and with the exception of a few people staying dry under the gazebo, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  All in all, it was a great night.  I’ll be photographing their wedding in July at Peachtree Christian Church and their reception at the Georgia Tech Alumni House (Pierce is an alum).  Check back then to see what the big day looked like!

As a wedding photographer, I have a bird’s eye view of lots of different weddings.  But no matter how many I see, there are traditions that turn up at all of them.  So, being the curious sort that I am, I decided to do a little research and write an occasional post on the history of some of the more prevalent wedding customs.  In the process, I’ll pull photos from some of the different wedding versions I’ve shot to give you an idea of the range out there.

I’m going to start with one of my favs – the wedding cake.  Beyond just liking cake (who doesn’t?) I love to photograph them.  If you get the light right on them, they’re truly beautiful to capture.  But I’m pretty sure they’re not there for my benefit.  So why do we have them at all these weddings?

Well, from what I’ve found, the history of the wedding cake is decidedly messy, I mean, for real messy.  The Romans used to bake a loaf of barley bread for the groom to break over the bride’s head.  Charming.  Supposedly, this represented the breaking of the hymen (doubly charming) and the dominion of the husband over the wife (that’s a triple!).  Fortunately, history saw fit to move on from there.  In Medieval times, they did a couple of good things, in my opinion.  They dropped the part where the bride gets whacked over the head by her new he-man of a husband and they added sugar to the bread (really good move).  Guests would come to the wedding bearing small sweet cakes or rolls and pile them as high as they could.  The couple would then try to lean over the piled cakes to kiss without toppling them.  If they managed that they would live long and prosper.  No one seemed to know what would happen if they knocked them all down.  I’m guessing plague, locust and maybe raining frogs, but it’s just a guess.  Another cool Medieval tradition included cutting the cake into very small pieces and throwing it over the shoulders of the bride and groom (I told you it was messy).  The guests would then dive for the small bits and presumably eat them off the floor.  If they managed to get a crumb of cake they would, you guessed it, live long and prosper.  Another version of that has the bride passing small bits of cake through her ring to all her guests.  Bad idea for a big wedding.

For the wedding cake as we know it, you have to skip forward to the 17th century.  The English and the French both claim to have made the first tiered, iced and decorated one (of course they do), but somewhere in that time a nasty concoction called the Bride’s Pie (think lots of organ meats in dough) wisely evolved into a version of the cake we see today.  By the time Queen Victoria got married in 1840, the custom was so entrenched she had a cake that measured 9.5 feet in diameter.  That’s a big cake and the term royal icing comes from there.  Many people believe the cake topper also came from Victoria and Albert’s cake.  They didn’t have a replica of themselves, but they did have little turtle doves and cupids and stuff.  Got people to thinking.  There’s also a story that sounds so made up I dare repeat it, about a baker making little dolls of his daughter and her fiance for the top of their wedding cake.  But who knows.  What we do know is they were wildly popular during the middle part of the 20th century and have been making a bit of a comeback.  Who doesn’t love a good cake topper?

The traditional white icing was at first a practical consideration.  It was hard enough to make smooth icing back then – some sources mention stirring for 2 hours – much less dye it.  In addition, it supported the Victorian idea of purity.  But while sugar was widely available, refined sugar not so much.  So only the rich people had it.  As a result, the whiter the cake, the more affluent the family.

The groom’s cake came about around the same time, but looked quite different than it does today.  It was basically a fruit cake (I know, yuck) that was cut into pieces and given to guests as a take home gift – kind of like those little bags of Krispy Kremes.  It was also the cake young girls put under their pillows so they would dream about their future husbands.

If you know other things regarding the history of the wedding cake you’d like to add, just put it in the comments section.  But I’ll just close by saying this is one tradition I approve of 100%.

For those of you who only know me as an Atlanta wedding and portrait photographer, I thought it would be fun to share photos from one of my other photography jobs.  I have the privilege of shooting the show shots for the musicals performed at the Atlanta Lyric Theatre in Marietta.  If you don’t know about them, you should definitely check them out.  They are the only local professional musical theatre company in Atlanta and they do really outstanding work.  They do 5 or 6 shows a year (sorry, I can’t remember which, I just show up with my cameras on final dress when it’s on my calendar).  Right now they’re doing All Night Strut, which is a song and dance review of music from the 30′s and 40′s.  It’s a terrific show with lots of recognizable music and a super cast.  Anyway, I’ll start posting some photos from the shows every few months to give you an idea of what it looks like and maybe entice you to go check it out.   Because, let’s face it, you need to get out from behind the computer for a little while and give yourself a break from all that wedding planning.

Every now and again I get a call for a small private wedding. They’re always so sweet and touching because there’s nothing at all to distract from the ceremony. Such was the case with Tami & Neville who got married in Atlanta at a small church on Columbia Drive last week. The entire wedding consisted of the two of them, the pastor and Tami’s mother. It didn’t stop them from looking terrific, though! I always feel strangely honored in those circumstances – like I’m getting to witness something special that so few people are a part of. It was a strikingly blue day, but so cold (less than 10 with the wind chill) it was hard to get from the car to the church. So we shot everything in the sanctuary. Nice wedding, though. I appreciated being a part of it.