Great FREE Guest Book Idea

Just had to drop in real quick and let you know about this offer from Oprah and Snapfish!
If you go to the Snapfish website using this link and sign in or sign up for Snapfish you can make a FREE 8x11 photo book courtesy of Oprah!

This would make a fantastic and unique guest book featuring pictures of you, your fiance and your families and friends. With a couple of fine point sharpies, your guests can sign the pages and make a truly special guest book and keepsake!

For you already married gals, this could be a great an inexpensive option for putting together some extra "Wedding Albums" in time for the holidays.

I've ordered prints from Snapfish before and been very happy with the quality, so I definitely recommend checking it out! Hurry up though, the offer is only good until Sunday, November 16!!

Engagement Session Follow Up

Photo Credit

First, I apologize for being MIA the last week. I've been working super late helping out with another event and then had a migraine this afternoon after helping out at 6AM this morning at the National Mall.

But, on to the more interesting stuff. Our engagement session! It was awesome. After much deliberation on the outfits (I went through 3 different tops, 3 different pairs of jeans, 2 different skirts, one dress, one dress, and a partridge and a pear tree). Think of all the permutations of outfits that produced. Thank you to all my friends for their advice and insight - and thank you to my beloved maid of honor - for her constant attention, support, and patience. . . all the way from London.

The weather: gorgeous (last Sunday). Fiance: A.MA.ZING. Seriously. He was so patient and such a good sport about everything. Rob told him to look at him, he looked and smiled. Rob told him to stand over there, he trotted and waited. Rob told him to pick me up, he heaved. Of course, I think he hid behind me during many of the pictures, using his affection for me as a convenient excuse to press his head against my ear, but I didn't mind.

Tips and takeaways for couples about to take their engagement pictures:

Do have an idea of what kind of mood and shots you want to take - close up, far away, walking away, silhouettes, portrait facing the camera vs. artsy.

Do dress up a little - it just makes it special. Rob told us "Dress like you're going on a second date with each other."

Do wear something that complements your skin tones and eyes. I was very hesitant to wear black because I'd been told that black doesn't always photograph well, but Rob said that because it was a great contrast to Mr. Sweetpea's white button-up shirt. Both of our hair is also very dark brown / black and, as Rob said, he was "able to get the light to shine through" and highlight our hair and frame us in an awesome way.

Do talk to each other while the photographer is shooting. We were able to ignore everyone and just be ourselves in our own little world. It was really neat, actually, because all these tourists were mingling and strolling around, and we were just us. In fact, Rob told us that during one of our sessions, this little old man could not stop taking pictures of us because he thought we were famous!

Do research your venue! We were stopped by the little ranger at least 2 times to make sure we were in the allowed areas and that we had our park permit. Seriously, it was annoying because we were just like everyone else with their cameras -- only we had a flash diffuser (whatever that silver disc was), a mini-ladder, and 2 bags of camera equipment.

Don't be inflexible. It got a little cold in the last hour, so I just threw on my jacket, ran around in between shots, and forgot about the rest. Just go with it. Also, there were many tourists, but hey, it's DC, right? Rob captured them in the background of the shots and the photos look very modern and urban aka Awesome.

Don't be late. We ran in to a bit of traffic on the way to the Memorial - typical DC. But we were ahead of schedule a little bit, so that still gave us plenty of sun light.

Don't ignore your photographer. Get to know him/her (especially if they're doing your wedding). This is a practice session, so find out who they are and develop your relationship with them. We found out Rob went to school in Ithaca - oh so close to Colgate!

I'm still trying to figure out a way to share them with you gals without just putting up the link, but Rob of Robert Holley Photography is AWESOME. I highly recommend him. I'm so excited he's doing our wedding!

Miss Capitol Hill Wedding Recap - Cutting the Cake

In continuation of my wedding recap I'm going to move on to the cake cutting. We did things a little differently then most brides.

A full sized wedding cake was included in the food package we chose and our reception site has an excellent pastry chef, but unfortunately she was going to be on maternity leave during our wedding. So our site opened up the possibility for us to use an outside baker.

Instead of getting a full sized cake, we suspected (and were correct) that our guests would rather have a real dessert. So we got a house dessert for the guests and used an outside baker to make a small cake just for cutting. 

Upon many recommendations we went with Teri Edwards of Cakes Unlimited. Like most things with the wedding I wanted something very simple and here are the adorable results-

All photos the the work of Linda Wallace

^The cake stand was from TJMaxx and we got the ribbon from a craft store

The other thing we did a little differently was the timing of the cake cutting. It seems like most brides nowadays put the cake on the dance floor and have the cake cutting sometime in the middle of the dancing. I specifically did not want this. I find that most people don't really pay attention to the cake cutting when its done this way.  I wanted to have the cake cutting right after dinner...before dancing and when everyone's dessert would be served.

I can't tell you how DIFFICULT this ended up being. Not for us but for the staff.  I had to say a million times I didn't want the cake on the dance floor and didn't want to cut it during dancing. And yet every time I got a diagram of the proposed layout for the wedding that darn cake table was somewhere on the dance floor. It was like no one could think outside of the box. I didn't think I was asking too much.  I was really worried that when I walked in the cake would be on the dance floor, but thankfully in the end it all came together. 

^I used the same knife my parents used to cut their wedding cake

^We put it on one plate

^And fed each other at the same time instead of one-by-one

^Mmm cake

So how did it taste?  Welllll that's a funny story.  I honestly don't remember the first taste. After that taste we had our reception site put the cake in the freezer and we were going to box it up and take it home with us.  Well the reception site never got the boxes to us before we left and we were so hurried when we left that we forgot to ask.

I was super bummed about this. I had visions of eating wedding cake all week long. It was something I kind of irrationally locked onto and I became a little annoyed at our site for not remembering to give it to us.  So after a week of sulking we ended up having them FEDEX it to us overnight in D.C.  Hehe

When we got it the cake was really bad looking. It definitely had a rough ride from C-ville. And I know the idea of eating a defrosted week old fed-exed cake might disgust most of you but you know what....it was REALLY good.

It was still incredibly moist and the icing was just the right level of sweet. The cake stayed moist in the fridge for another week as we ate off of it. 

So I figure if a cake that's been through all that can still taste awesome then imagine how good it would be under normal circumstances.  All the credit to that goes to Cakes Unlimited!

Vendors So Far:

Video- Monachetti

Photography - Linda Wallace

Hair/Makeup- Daphne Latham

Dress Designer - Vwidon

Dress Salon - Promise for the Savvy Bride

Shoes - Vera Wang new from Ebay

Bracelet- Carolee

Veil- Occansey Design

Purse - Belk

Hair Flower - Ella's Alley

Flowers - Blue Ridge Floral

Suits- Men's Wearhouse

Ties - Wild Ties

Socks - The Gap

Bridesmaid Dresses - Maggy London from Nordstrom

Flower Girl Dress- Rare Editions from Dillards

Sportscar - Sports Car Rental

Reception/Accommodations - The Clifton Inn

Getaway Streamerthrows - Aerotechnic

Paper - Andbear

Cake - Cakes Unlimited 

Purple Week on EAD

It's color week again over at Elizabeth Anne Designs --color weeks are my favorite b/c there's such an overwhelming amount of inspiration it's a little bit of heaven for any bride who has those colors. I was a big fan of pink week and I don't even like pink in weddings!


So this go around, purple is the color of the week and EAD has a really unique inspiration board with purple, aqua, and chartreuse. I ran across the below image the other day on the website of German photographer Thomas Rusch.


It's not a wedding image exactly and Rusch isn't a wedding photographer at all, but remember to look in all types of places for inspiration. You never know what you might find. And this beautiful image just so happens to fit in perfectly with today's inspiration board over at EAD.

Picture This

I'm on the photographer/videographer hunt now. Although I'm still looking, there are 2 photographers whose online portfolios have caught my eye. The first one offers above average quality and a good dose of creativity. It's a great bang for the buck, too, relative to other packages I've seen. We could get engagement and bridal sessions, 8 hours of wedding day coverage, custom 40 page album, and 3 parent albums all within budget. Then, I came across some beautiful pictures, popped right off the screen! The colors are definitely more vibrant and there's more creativity (a lot less posed)---though they both consider themselves photojournalistic. They offer a package inclusive of videography and photography that comes in $600 above budget and only gets us a 24 page album and digital negatives.

So, we're thinking perhaps we could use them for just the engagement session. It's the sensible thing to do I'm sure, but I wish I hadn't seen their site! Wondering if I'll regret not spending more for better pix....
We've actually allotted a nice fraction of the budget toward photography, so we're not trying to skimp on it. I've read skimping on photos is a common regret from brides. It's a question of upgrading or not.

I originally hadn't intended on hiring a videographer, but my mother shared that it's one of the things she wished she would've included in her day. So, I'm game for a basic edited video. After all, there are parts of the ceremony that the bride doesn't get to see that would be nice to see in motion later on. On tours, I have seen a lot of sites have installed surveillance style cameras for the bride to view the goings-on while she's in her suite. Nice touch.

So, what are your feelings about top of the line photography vs. above average quality?