Virginia and Erich's Colonial Williamsburg Wedding.....

Virginia and Erich are both designers, and this creativity showed well in every aspect of their wedding. They created every decorative detail.

I had to resist the urge to steal away with Virginia's Ferragamo's.  

The wonderful Antonia Christianson was the planner for this lovely event. The flowers were by Dick Fore.  

Julianna and Jedd at the Cavalier on the Hill

Julianna and Jedd's wedding spectacular was coordinated by the always amazing Michelle Kilgore, the lighting was provided by Blue Steel, the gorgeous cake was created by The Magic Cupboard and the flowers were lovingly arranged by Patrice at Bloom.  Julianna and Jedd flew in the Stooges from New Orleans, who blew us away (pun intended).  

Julianna and Jedd chose to have a first look before the ceremony.  

Quite possibley my favorite wedding cake ever.  And the wallpaper that inspired it:

Loved this in color and b&w,  so you get to see them both : )

Long time no blog ; )

Ahem, it's been a while.  

I knew I needed to start blogging again when folks were calling to see if I was dead.  Answer: I'm not dead yet.

Aaaand, I'm still shooting lots of weddings in lots of wonderful, wonderful places. Soon you will see a gorgeous wedding in Mexico, another in Costa Rica, a beautiful wedding in Baltimore, DC , New York, and all over Virginia.  In other words, despite the lack of blogging, I've been busy.

First up, Deanna Casey is married!  Deanna is a lovely friend of mine and a fellow wedding photographer and it was a special thrill to photograph her absolutely gorgeous wedding at the Hermitage. I also recently shot Deanna's sister in law Julianna's wedding at the Old Cavalier.  Wait until you see that amazing wedding.  Michelle Kilgore coordinated, and Julianna and Jedd flew in a brass band from New Orleans to celebrate with them.  It was so fun.

I also have lots of news I'll be sharing on the friends and family front.  So many people I know and love are doing wondrous new things I want to show you.

First up, my sister has a new website and it is smokin'!  Go visit it here and then let her know what you think.

And a few bridal portraits of lovely Deanna, taken in my garden.

xo-e

I really, really, really, really, really loved Deanna's Queen Anne's Lace Bouquet.

New Vow coming out soon...

The New Vow Magazine is out on January 28th.  I'm delighted to have shot the cover and a really fun editorial in the Mag.  Once the issue is out I'll share more.  I'm enjoying a winter holiday and hope you are too. Soon, about eleventy dozen weddings to blog.  xo-e

Dana and Nonye at the Portsmouth Renaissance.....

Dana and Nonye were married on a beautiful summer day in Portsmouth Virginia.  I traveled to NYC to shoot their engagement photos in early spring, and got to know them a bit.  What I learned is that they are wonderful, vibrant people with great style and a singular love and passion for one another.

Dana has brilliant taste in shoes.  Yes, both pairs are hers.  There are some pretty spectacular clothing changes coming up....

Dana gave Nonye a very special wedding gift which made him very happy.

  Dana looks nervous, and maybe a touch queasy.  Here's the thing.  There are SIX HUNDRED PEOPLE in the church waiting to watch her get married.  I would be nervous too!

I think about three hundred of the guests had cameras, but that's a story for another day :  )

Nonye is Nigerian, and one wonderful Nigerian tradition is to rain money on the couple, pretty much throughout the evening.  I'm not talking about a few dollars pinned to a dress, or a dollar dance, I'm referring to an almost constant deluge of cash raining down throughout the evening.  I have never seen more money in my life. The floor was an inch thick with money many times.

Dana and her beloved Father.

Nonye and his darling Mother.

Chocolates from Vosges as favors.  Dana is a major foodie.

Antonia Christianson Events did a wonderful job coordinating this wedding.  Lee Snyder made the gorgeous flowers, Charlie Pike lit the Portsmouth Renaissance up like a purple Christmas Tree, Kim Wadsworth ensured that Dana glowed like the beauty queen she is all day long, and I'm sure I've forgotten many others.

And my wonderful second shooters and assistant were my saving grace that day.  Many thanks to John Cachero, John Wadsworth and Melissa Inman. 

Catherine and Nate's Contemporary Art Center Wedding

There's nothing as beautiful as an engraved  invitation.

Catherine and her sister and brothers.  Beautiful family.

Nate and his groomsmen.

Catherine and her beautiful Mother Betsy.

What a lovely, fresh, classic wedding.  It was such a pleasure to shoot.  And what lovely families Nate and Catherine have.  A wonderful, wonderful day I was thrilled to be a part of.

Wow, I just had a lovely and unannounced blog sabbatical.  Why?  Because fall is the busiest time of the wedding season.  And also......I had a VERY IMPORTANT knitting project I was committed to, and my children started school (hurrah) (I can say that because they don't read my blog), and I have been processing and posting weddings for my lovely clients left and right, and designing albums and all the other things that tend to eat up my time.

Oh, and a bit of travel thrown in as well.  Enough excuses ;  )  I'm back and heading in new directions.

Coming up the first week of October will be my SEVENTH BLOG ANNIVERSARY.  Yes, I've been blogging for seven years, and have heard everything from 'What's a blog?'  at the beginning of this journey to 'My Grandmother has a blog', recently.  I started out on typepad or blogger (don't remember which) and migrated to Squarespace several years ago.   I am proud of the hundreds of weddings I have shot in those years and only wish I had had the time to feature every single one of them. 

I'm mentioning all of this because I am planning a slowdown on blogging.  I have a huge project cooking I need to devote a lot of time to, so I plan to shorten the weddings I feature, eliminate 'Friday finds' and include more of a monthly roundup of fun stuff I've found.  I started the Friday finds because my favorite part of following blogs is the exploratory aspect.  I love being introduced to new artists, ideas and stuff on blogs, and the intent was to keep blogging fresh to me, as something I looked forward to sharing, rather than a chore (SEVEN YEARS, I remind you ; )

I am not stopping blogging at all, nor am I planning any slowdown on the shooting of weddings, which are as important to me as the air I breathe.  I just have a BIG PROJECT cooking that I'll fill you in on at a later date. I tell you all of this so you won't think I have dropped off the planet.  I plan to try to blog at least once a week, but we'll see.  This is a journey, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing it with me.

On to some fun stuff:

These are a few of the books I read and was inspired by this summer.  

1) The Selby is in your Place.  Todd Selby photographs the cool kids in their home environments.  The voyeur in me loves to look at where people live, because it so often lets you in on who they really are.  I love the photography:  clean and purely editorial.  And I've learned if I want to be cool, I need to collect human teeth, or prosthetic legs, or plastic Japanese anime figurines by the thousands.  All I could wonder when I gazed at some of these habitats, is 'Who dusts all that crap?'.  Which marks me as hopelessly middle aged and uncool, for sure.

2)Pork and Sons.  Phaidon does is again.  A book designed so beautifully I seriously thought long and hard about building my website around the idea of pink gingham.  Oh, and the recipes and photos?  Sublime.

3)Trains and Buttered Toast. The anglophile in me finds these essays (which were originally radio broadcasts) about Britain and its lovely heritage enchanting.  Betjeman rhapsodizes about life's  simple things and his love for the world he inhabits is infectious.

4) Silhoutte:  The Art of the Shadow.  An incredibly well researched, scholarly coffee table book about the history of silhouettes.  I like to dive in for a few pages and drink in the wonderful imagery.  I've been collecting silhouettes for about twenty years, so this book was like Christmas to me : )

5)Bucolic Plague. For years my husband and I have had a running joke about throwing over our busy, urban lives and becoming artisanal cheesemakers.  Of course we know nothing about making cheese, or farming, or animal husbandry, but it's one of those dreams of the simple life we all have.  In this book, Josh Kilmer-Purcell and his partner do just that (with about the same level of knowledge as most of us) and find, thanks to an endorsement by Martha Stewart and a huge amount of work, that they actually can grab the good life.  Hilarity ensues.

6)Lastly, More Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Lovely photos, lovely projects.  This one feeds my addiction to knitting, for sure.  I don't have the time to knit sweaters and large projects, so books like this address my need for knitting variety with a carefully budgeted schedule.

Next up, Catherine and Nate at the Contemporary Arts Center.  Yay!