Bouffants and Cowboy Boots
It is tough for some brides (and moreso the bride’s parents!) to get their head around a trash the dress session. The misconception is that you have to destroy your dress or float in a lagoon. To move away from this stigma, many photographers have started calling their sessions a Day After Session or Rock the Frock or Encore Session. The main purpose of this portrait session is to get fun bridal portraits without the stress of the wedding day. A benefit to this is that you can wear your dress again (yay!) and not worry about it getting dirty, as well as do something different with hair, makeup and accessories that may not have fit with your wedding day style.
Here at Studio Laguna, we like to call our session a Reprise Session. It can be with just the bride or the couple, more fashion forward or more relaxed, with a theme or without, whatever the client would like.
On Sunday, I photographed Ashleigh’s Reprise Session. If you haven’t seen Ryan and Ash’s wedding yet, go to our weddings category and scroll down until you find them, it was AMAZING! Ash has a great sense of style, and wanted to up the glam factor while still keeping the rual feel. Luckily, I came across an amazing location while driving around a couple months ago, so we had a wild west set to work with. Ashleigh got her hair teased like it has never been teased before and threw on her cowboy boots. The shoot ended up with a 60′s western vogue feel, and I love the images! Check out the favorites =)
Alice and Wonderland Trash the Dress
Allie and Dave are one of our favorite clients. They love edgy photography and will jump at any chance to do something unique and fun. So when I discovered a cool location and told Allie about it, she was ready to go for her trash the dress session.
We call our trash the dress portraits a “reprise session” just because most brides get nervous about actually destroying their dress. However, Allie wanted to trash this dress like there was no tomorrow! I brought paint and scissors and we had fun!
One of Allie’s favorite fairy tales is Alice and Wonderland and the location I picked was a bit bizarre, so it was pretty logical to have this story influence our shoot. A surprise to me was that Allie’s husband was coming along for the shoot as well, so we even got to have a Mad Hatter. We were also joined by my dear friend Wendy, who was a huge help staging the sets and bouncing ideas off of. And a huge thanks goes to Sarah, owner of A Milestone Paper Company, who created the gorgeous labels for us!
We started off our “Allie in Wonderland” journey with Allie finding the rabbit hole and then a mysterious drink and snack. She paints the white roses red, and the rosettes on her dress also become red. We had a fabulous Mad Hatter Tea Party and hookah break. Then Allie decided it was all getting too weird and headed home, where she emerged from a tree. What happened after this was Allie cutting her glorious dress into bits and pieces, which was awesome to watch and photograph. She now has a darling tutu. I must also add that she has the perfect Disney princess hands =)
Dave and Allie, thank you so much for having me be a part of this fantastic shoot. Anytime you want to have a creative outlet, give me a call =) Here are my favorites, there are a million more to come!
Dan and Erin’s Day After Session
Dan and Erin chose to have a day after session so there was less pressure from the wedding day. We had scouted out some great locations during an earlier trip and had a wonderful time driving around and capturing these beautiful images. Erin’s Jenny Yoo dress from Flutter Boutique had the etherial flowing look that worked perfectly with the natural surroundings and John made sure to photograph Dan in his dapper suit against the steele of the train tracks.
Here are the favorites from that session, it was so nice to take our time getting lovely images in the soft fall sunlight!
Wedding Shoot in Minneapolis
Last night, the wonderful Staja Studios hosted a shoot-out at their Minneapolis studio.
I had such a wonderful time! A large group of photographers from all over the twin cities split into two groups, each with a model. It was fantastic getting to experiment and take my time taking photographs and trying new styles, looks and angles.
Here are my favorite images, I hope you like them! Let me know what you think!
Here is a list of the participating vendors that helped put this wonderful shoot together.
Dress Designer – Kaja Foat
www.foatdesign.com
Florist – Pearls and Lace
pearls-and-lace.com
Make-Up Artist – Collette Harrington
Hair – Aly Zacher
Models – Rachel Petrie and Halie O’Brien
If you would like their contact information, just email me. I don’t want to put their emails online.
Dancing in the Park
David and Ragenea were married yesterday (see previous post) and had a Day After session today. Who wouldn’t want an excuse to get in their wedding garb again? Ragenea’s bouquet still looked great, and their floral designer, Christine’s Floral Touch, had made a spare groom’s boutonniere so we were able to have their wedding flowers in the shots as well.
Dave and Genea wanted to get the Minneapolis skyline in the pictures. Since they are very well traveled, it was a perfect backdrop to have one more skyline to add to their collection =) And as luck would have it, a band was playing classic jazz tunes in Father Hennepin Park, so they were able to get a dance in as well.
Dave and Genea, I wish I could have spent even more time listening to all of your stories and laughing with you, it has been so great getting to know you both. Here are the favorites…and beware, there is definitely a lot of kissy shots! =)
Steampunk Couple
Wendy and Brian are celebrating their fifth anniversary! And what better way for a good looking couple to celebrate their lasting relationship than with a photo shoot. Brian creates steampunk and Star Wars cuff links, tie tacks and earrings (view his pieces on his etsy site), so we decided to have a steampunk twist to the shoot.
And Wendy went into action…pulling out her lace gloves, her beautiful hair pieces, her killer stockings, her pistols (yep, pistols) and a million other amazing pieces she has collected over the years.
Pazzobello Flowers knocked my socks off with fantastic arrangements (the tussie mussie was made by Brian) using sculptural, graphic floral pieces and even incorporating gears! The colors were bright and vibrant which went perfectly with the neutrals Brian and Wendy chose for their outfits.
I will be blogging on Friday with more details of the dinner part of the night, but for now, I have too many favorites of Wendy and Brian and have to just share these tonight =) Enjoy!
