Posted by David
One thing that photographers do with their free time is check out other photographer's blogs. We like to admire other's work, be inspired by it, keep up on the competition, and yes, bite, as in "beg, borrow, bite," a term taught to me in a design class years ago (I argued with the instructor that it was "steal" not "bite," but he seemed to find that insulting. Whatever).
There are different ways to blog your weddings. A lot of people simply throw up pictures, "Look, I shot a wedding! Aren't I fab? There were some people there, but OMG look at my pictures!" Others go through the step-by-step of how they shot the wedding. Others still will go into length about details, table toppers from here, hanging decorations from there, cake by so and so. Oh, and let's not forget the destination weddings. "LOOK where I went!"
Most often, when you read about how amazing the wedding was, you often read about how the bride and groom spared no expense on X, and "OMG was it gorg!" X is usually a thing, and for some reason that thing is what totally made shooting the wedding worthwhile for the photographer. It was a pair of shoes, a stylist that put together the décor, a venue, but it's almost always centered around stuff.
For us, what totally made our most recent wedding was the bouquet! More specifically, the designer of the bouquet. No, you haven't heard of the designer. No, you can't get them anywhere. And honestly, the designer probably doesn't even want you to know about this, but it totally made the wedding for me and Melody.
The night before the wedding, Melody and I stopped by the venue to see how preparations were going and how the ceremony would run. We don't always have time for this, but we are happy to when we do.
We arrived at Chez Shari at the Manteca Golf Club about ten minutes before the rehearsal was supposed to start. Family members were bustling about hanging decorations, the groom was fielding questions from vendors and the like and the bride . . . well, the bride wasn't there. Gulp.
At first it was very hush hush. "Uh, something came up, but she'll be here soon. Promise."
"Soon" got to be longer and longer. Finally the groom got over to us and let us know that the bride was in the ER.
Now, I won't drag the suspense out; it's not a nice thing to do. Besides, you can scroll down and see that they got married. She was fine. But the doctors sent her home to rest before the big day. The rehearsal was run with a stand-in and we all went home, relieved that the bride was alright. Well, most of us went home.
Late into the wee hours of the morning, a groom stayed up, surrounded by flowers that had not been arranged. Who knew that all those years ago when Robert had to take a class to meet a requirement for college it would come in handy on the eve of his wedding.
That's right, at about four o'clock on the morning of his wedding, Robert finally crawled into bed after arranging his bride's bouquet for her. I don't really think I need to say much more than that. Some people talk about love, others express it.
How have you expressed your love lately?
While Melody was inside chronicling preparations, I was outside getting details. Someday I'll have time to make our yard as cute . . . someday.
Off to the venue, Chez Shari's for bridals.
A couple of sweet shots from the ceremony.
Reception fun. Chez Shari's recently installed tons of mood lighting. It makes for a fun and colorful reception. Combined with Kayla's knack for design, the venue looked fantastic.
One of the reasons that Kayla and Robert hired us was because they knew that a great deal of the wedding would take place after sundown. If you don't have light, you need to not only be able to introduce it into a situation, but control it. It's tempting to overpower a scene with your own light and make everything look like it was shot by a guest, just with a better lens, or shoot with only available light, and turn everything into a black and white and call it art. It is far more difficult to get just the right mix of ambient and introduced light, especially on a lit dance-floor, or with colored mood lighting.
We stayed right up to midnight and caught the traditional New Years kiss. After we packed up our gear, lights, stands, and laptop, we headed off to a Jack in the Box, grabbed a bite to eat, checked into a hotel, backed up images and crashed till morning. All in all, it was a pretty good way to ring in the New Year.
Congratulations Kayla and Robert. Thanks for letting us ring in the New Year with you.
Venue: Chez Shari's in Manteca
House Keeping: Guests of the wedding may recall seeing a slideshow of images shot the day of the wedding. Next to that slide-show was a stack of cards with a link to Kayla and Robert's online gallery. We've had some issues with the link and have had to create a new gallery. The link to that gallery is here. For those of you that would like to be notified when the new gallery is made available by Kayla and Robert, drop us an email at melodyanddave@gmail.com, put "Kayla and Robert" in the subject and then how you know them in the body, ex. "mother of the bride," and we'll send you an email with the password when it's ready along with a discount on prints.
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