I was really pleased with this shoot, and want to thank editor Kim Wadsworth for the fantastic styling and Mia Byrd for her help as well. Also Brenda Mihalko is the crazy talented designer who pulls the entire magazine together.

The red pagoda umbrella featured on the cover is mine.  I got it at Bella Umbrella and every time I carry it I get tons of  compliments. 

xo-eleise

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 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 : )

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.

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. 

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!

Again, another week dashes by.  This week I took an impromptu trip to North Carolina to visit friends and family. While there I stopped by Deweys, and bought some of their famously delicious Moravian sugar cake, and also a colorful and pleasingly tart pink lemonade cake (1). Dewey's offers mail order, and believe me, nothing says Christmas like a tin of their paper thin ginger spice cookies.

(2) Next up is a find introduced to me (like so many other things) by my sister.  Skin Trip smells like the summer of 1979, when folks used to lather up with coconut oil and bake like potatoes on the beach.  It's fragrant and fast absorbing and absolutely addictive.  You can get it at Whole Foods or on Amazon.

(3) I'm sure you've seen this cake as it has been all over the place in the blogsphere.  Nonetheless I can't resist showing it again.  I first saw it on the FiberFarm blog, and also on Merriment Event's blog.  The cake is by Magpie Cakes, and is beyond.  Just beyond anything I have seen lately.  A gorgeous, tasteful cake with a sophisticated sense of humor.  Loooooove.

(4)  My new needlepoint project.  Should be finished by 2020. I do a lot of knitting and a little bit of needlepointing.  I was cured of an active addiction to needlepoint twelve years ago, when I needlepointed a kneeler for my Anglican Church. It was years until I picked up a needle again.  Nothing like deadlines to kill a hobby ;  )

(5)  The fantastic animal photographs of photographer Sharon Montrose. She has a wonderful blog as well, which I have added to my feed. I plan on ordering several of these for a montage I have planned for an empty wall.  Very, very excited.  Via Jordan Ferney.