It was almost midnight on New Years Eve. Peter had joined Sophie and her family in Michigan to ring in the New Year and attend her cousin’s wedding the next day. Once the ball started to drop he stood up and tried to get Sophie to join him. She thought he wanted to kiss her – which she had no intention of doing, standing in the middle of the room with her family watching. After reluctantly joining him he dropped to one knee and asked her if she wanted to do something special with him in 2011. Surrounded by her family, he asked her to marry him and she said yes.

When planning a wedding it can be easy to get lost in the details. To forget about the purpose of the day, worry about frivolous things, and get caught up in everything that the wedding is not. If you read the first post from Sophie and Peter’s wedding you know that their day was chalk full of details, personality, and diy projects. Despite their obvious inspiration and hard work they never lost sight of what they wanted their wedding day to truly be. Balancing these two sides and not letting one take over the other is a difficult task not easily achieved. It take a lot of effort to keep a wedding day about the wedding and yet have it personal and inviting enough to not look like the rest. They managed to perfectly marry the planning and details with the wedding and create one of the most unique weddings I have been a part of.

Today I invite you to take a closer look at the wedding day. This of course centers around the ceremony, which is only partly told through the photographs. It was Sophie and Peter’s intention to have a wedding ceremony that had a time for worship and singing, and time for prayer, and a time to exchange the vows that last til eternity. The choose their friend, Jim Ehrman to officiate and he spoke some of the most honest, accurate, and challenging words on a wedding day. Jim asked family and friends to describe Sophie and to describe Peter and the word that came up the most for both of them was driven. They work better together than apart when they put each other first – which really is what a marriage is all about. While I could go on an on about the wedding day I’ll leave you with the pictures and hope you enjoy once again looking into the lives of Sophie and Peter and the day that brought them together.

We pick back up before the ceremony, after the first look when the bridal party got together for a few pictures before heading to the church. It was drizzling at this point, but it didn’t last long and cleared up for the rest of the day!

The church was close to bursting at the seams filled with happy guests ready to witness the wedding. Sophie and Peter chose to be married there for several reasons, including the fact that it was the same place that Sophie’s parents and grandparents wed. The great thing about doing a first look – in my experience – is that it adds so much to the wedding day. The moments walking down the aisle are just as emotional, but being able to share your thoughts, excitement, and anticipation before the ceremony while you are alone and not in front of all of your guests, is something you can’t replicate.

Each reading, song, transition and story was purposeful and meaningful to both of them and soon the congregation as they witnessed the ceremony unfold. 

After a joyous exit, the bridal party loaded in to the Mog and headed back to the farm. The Unimog is an german truck known for it’s off road capabilities, and has made Sophie’s dad known throughout the county since he comes to plow people out in winter. After having the truck shipped from Germany he assembled it to his liking and it has become a staple in the family and community, so naturally it was a part of the wedding day. 

This might be the first picture I’ve taken while driving. Don’t tell. We stopped at the neighbor’s barn on the way to the family farm for some pictures…

The ground that was a cornfield less than a year ago was completely transformed into a grassy enclosure perfect for a wedding reception. To see all of the details from the reception head over to the first post, or continue on with the rest of the evening’s events.

The party had begun and lasted in to the evening as people danced till they dropped. It was a celebration, and one that I so enjoyed being a part of, so thanks again for inviting me along and three cheers for the newlyweds! hip hip hooray!

The air was cool, fresh, and had the faint smell of Autumn. It was Labor Day and I spent the morning with Bruce and Janet, on the property Bruce’s family owns. We went past the garden, down the path to the sheep pasture, next to the horse trailer, over the electric fence, and finally up the hill to the fields and pond. We were in the country and they felt right at home, although we all know a Jersey girl never forgets her roots.

There is a comfort and ease about Bruce and Janet that I like so much. They are simply themselves and love each other that way. Now they are planning their wedding and getting ready to begin their lives together. Before they do, I took their engagement pictures. These photos give Bruce and Janet some gorgeous portraits of the two of them together in a much more relaxed setting than their wedding, which is something that I think is so important for couples to have.

I’m not sure if you would say Bruce’s family has a farm, or maybe it’s his aunt and uncle that live next door who have a farm. Either way I had to get a few shots of the animals that were around!

A simple pond can be so amazing in the summer! I’m jealous

don’t these two look good together?

The field of goldenrod up on the hill was gorgeous and I loved using the color as a main element in the photos. There’s no better image to end with than Bruce and Janet running off, about to start their adventure together. I had a great time with you guys and just think – next Labor Day you’ll be married! Once again thanks for sending me home with the tomatoes, potatoes and carrots. They were delicious and I wish I lived closer to take more of the garden extras off your hands.

There is almost no end to the work and creativity Tristan and Colleen put in to their wedding. Best described as a DIY wedding in the country, it was the perfect blend of rustic, simple, handmade, and creative elements. Tristan and Colleen invited their guests to join them in celebrating the day with the backyard party they hosted at the house Tristan grew up in. Simple touches such as letterpressed signs, mason jars, hay bales, small potted herbs as favors, lawn games, a bluegrass band, strawberry shortcake, and of course Colleen’s handmade dress – and Tristan’s handmade vest – came together to pull the whole day together. It was a celebration, and a relaxed one which really made it perfect for kids. Of course there’s nothing like the details that are around when you have a wedding at home, so this post will have lots of inspiration for you. Let’s start with the invitation suite, since we know that it sets the stage for the wedding:

Simple, bright, and unique the invites captured the feel of the wedding day and provided just enough information – I love Plan B. Now the scene when I arrived and everyone was getting ready…

Max had a festive bow on for the wedding day, and did his job cleaning up any scraps that were dropped after dinner – that’s what dogs are for, right? Inside, a cat slept and the shortcake cooled and fresh strawberries dried after washing. Alice, Colleen’s sister, worked on putting together boutineers and corsages, while Colleen’s bouquet below sat waiting for her. Do you love the peonies? I do! Colleen told me they picked them when they were in season (and still tight buds, unbloomed) and kept them in the refrigerator until a few days before the wedding. They opened right up when they needed them too and looked fabulous.

Colleen not only made her dress but the vest Tristan wore -which fit him perfectly! The site for the reception was right next to the house, on the base of what use to be an old barn, but now was a raised platform. Hay bales were covered in quilts for convenient rows for guests to sit in.

After the ceremony I went over to an barn on the family property where there were also some cows nearby.

That dress and vest are looking good! After some pictures we joined the reception and here are some of the details from that below:

All of the kids had fun with the lawn games – even if they were just de-tangling the ladderballs. I should add the kids weren’t the only ones playing games. Washers, ladderball, and Kan Jam were set out for everyone to enjoy – and they did! The fabulous strawberry shortcake made it’s entrance below…

…and was served up for everyone to enjoy. I think they picked all of the berries for this but I could be wrong. A guestbook poster was set out for everyone to sign, and I love the idea of being able to hang it up somewhere and see what people wrote. All in all, it was a wonderful day with so many details and I couldn’t be happier to document it.

To see the full set of images head over to Tristan + Colleen’s gallery, and leave a comment here and help them earn a free enlargement. Enjoy viewing + congrats again to the newlyweds!

Of course, while I’m waiting, they are working. I checked in with Mike and Nikki and asked them to share their progress and experience as they prepare for the wedding. I know how much work they are putting in and I thought you would all enjoy seeing how they pull everything together. They left their Manhattan home to visit over the 4th of July and Mike wrote about their trip and plans for the wedding:

July 3, 2010 – 113 days and counting.

It’s 10am on Saturday morning and I can already feel the beads of sweat forming on my back. Looking out on the rolling Virginia hills in front of me I can see the heat coming off the corn fields. It’s hot now, and it’s only going to get worse. Eighteen hours and one short plane ride ago we were on an air conditioned trading floor in Manhattan, and I was part of a group frantically trying to wrap up the mid year performance estimate to send to our anxious investors. But that was our real lives back at the hedge fund in New York. For this long Fourth of July weekend, and many more to come for the next several months, we’ll be down here on the Jebson’s farm sweating it out and putting in a lot of elbow grease to make their cute farm into our ideal wedding location.

This is the farm Nikki grew up in; it’s a beef farm with nearly 100 head of cattle and sits on about 150+ acres of land in Culpeper, VA, which is about 1.5 hours southwest of Washington DC. For her, this is home. For me, it’s a world away from my suburban New Jersey upbringing, and even further from my stuffy New York City studio. The Jebsons’ seem to think of this as work, for me it’s like I’m in a giant sandbox, with all my trucks, only the box is much bigger and the trucks are real. If they think that I think digging things up with backhoes is work they’re sorely mistaken.

It’s not the first time we’ve been here to work; back in June we came down for a weekend to start knocking out fences and plant a garden. This weekend we will finish the demolition, start some cleaning, and focus on painting. Every wedding guest is going to receive a homemade jar of pickled green beans and cucumbers, Mrs. Jebson’s specialty. We wanted to incorporate as many aspects of the farm as possible and this being a beef farm, the reception’s main course was an easy call.

For the ceremony we’ll be getting married on top of a hill just behind the house. It’s the highest point on the farm and in October the sun will be setting just off our shoulders but far enough to the left not to make our guests squint. We’ll face the mountains to the west, with vast cornfields down the hill to our right and cow pastures down the other side of the hill to the left. Mr. Jebson will use the tractor and planting equipment to smooth out the hill, so the land will be flattened and our guests will sit comfortably on rows of square hay bales.

Behind the ceremony, closer to the house, there is a cluster of four barns, three of them are rectangular and line up parallel to each other. One barn closer to the house is the cattle barn, where one or a few cows are kept when they’re not in the fields. It’s the biggest and most suitable for the reception with big sliding doors, a couple open sides, and it’s made of really old oak. Unfortunately it’s also full of 100 year old hay, old doors, broken tools, and just about anything else you can imagine saying “eh, just throw it in the barn” to. My main job this weekend was to continue ripping down one of the older and more beat up sides. Additionally we started cleaning it out, which means getting all the hay out and identifying what can be thrown out and what can be salvaged elsewhere. After we finish cleaning it out Mr. Jebson is going to lay a new floor of concrete.

The forth barn near the house, and closest to the ceremony is named the calf barn because that’s where they often put the babies to nurse them after birth. Nikki, armed with an electrical paint gun contraption made this white cinderblock structure a classic barn red. We also painted the windowsills white for good measure. This is the most completed thing we’ve done so far and it looks great.

There is a square fenced in area between the calf barn and the reception barn and this is where we’ll have outdoor seating around a bon fire complete with whiskey and cigars. The fence, which has been ripped down, was old and not in very good shape. Later this summer we will be building a new one and painting it white. Right now it’s hard to imagine but in three months these buildings which are more suited for barn cats and tractors are going to host an elegant dinner for nearly 200 people!

Thanks for sharing your progress and I can’t wait to document the wedding and see the hard work you’ve put in!

Light streamed through the old wooden barn and created the most gorgeous texture. Colleen and Tristan had just been married, and I went down the road with them to the old barn that has been in the family for years. They stopped and picked some wild raspberries, and took a minute to let everything sink it. We headed towards the hayloft and they climbed up into the hay, which was stacked high on top of each other so it slide down at first, until they reached a spot to sit…

I had a great time photographing Tristan + Colleen’s wedding, which was the perfect mix of backyard, country, bluegrass, homemade, strawberry shortcake, lawn games, wildflowers, and family + friends. It also was moving weekend for Matt and I, so while I was busy photographing the wedding he was busy transporting everything (with the help of some great friends) into our new place. We had been living in a temporary set up for a month until we could move in, which of course meant 2 moves, lots of packing and re-packing, and even more chaos. We spent all of yesterday unpacking, which of course takes forever so we have several more days of unpacking to go. I know there are a lot of other people moving so you know what I mean – but isn’t it so hard to figure out where to put everything? I feel like in each new place there is some piece of furniture that doesn’t fit quite right, or something that we really need to get – but might not use again. I sound like I’m complaining and I don’t want to since really I’m so happy to be at the end of the moving process. I’ll have to have you over to our new place (and by have you over I mean post some pics on the blog) once we’re set up!

It was gorgeous. There were wide stretches of land and open fields, mountains in the distance and grasses blowing in the wind. I know the country has grown on me, even though I grew up in a close to opposite location. My destination was Culpepper, Virginia and Nikki’s parent’s family farm. It was the location not only for their engagement session but for their October wedding. It was wonderful to get a feel for the area and meet up with Mike, Nikki, and her family and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to photographing their wedding. I think you’ll be excited to see it as well.

I’m sure the wedding is going to be amazing. The view you see above will be visible for the ceremony and the reception will take place in and around a barn on their property. I know they have work to do to get ready, but I think it’s going to be completely worth it in the end.

Don’t be fooled by the country setting. Mike and Nikki are New Yorkers now – even more so than I – and love living in the city. Not only that, but they’re pretty much what I would classify as world travelers. They like to take a three day weekend and hop on a plane to Amsterdam, Holland, Paris, you name it. This is the beginning of many more adventures for these two.

Mike and Nikki have a great twin lens reflex camera that they’ve used on some of their trips. Since there’s a darkroom in Nikki’s house she prints some of their images and enjoys photography… maybe we’ll see more from her some day. We loaded up some film in the camera for the esession and Mike and Nikki took some pictures of each other. I sent the film off to be developed and I bet it’s done but en route due to our change of address. I hope they turn out and if so I’ll have to do a second post of those.

Nikki you’re gorgeous! I can’t wait to photograph you on your wedding day

I asked them what the plan was for their honeymoon. They’re going big : Africa. Tanzania and Kenya to be exact.

We headed out into a field where some of the cows were grazing to get them in some of the shots. I learned that the cow they’ll be serving at the wedding is already picked out – I know that sounds weird but it doesn’t get more local than that.

I love those b+w’s and you know you can’t wait for their wedding. I certainly can’t.

This engagement session takes place in Rochester NY in an unlikely farm in the middle of the city. I had been excited for this session since I started talking with Margaret + Luke about some of their ideas for the shoot, and we decided to break up and do both a country picnic and a night session that you’ll see later on. Unlike most guys who are more tentative about having their picture taken, Luke was all about it which made it even better. We were even joined by a special guest, an alpaca, who wandered in and out of the frames to our delight.

Now that their engagement session is done, I’m looking forward even more to their wedding, which is going to be a gorgeous outdoor affair at a park/amphitheater in North Carolina. Margaret is doing a lot of planning for the big day and incorporating a lot of handcrafted details, so I can’t wait to see what she has in store. She is also a talented letterpress artist and is printing my business cards and a few other materials for me! You will be seeing some of those soon if you haven’t already.

Isn’t Margaret beautiful? Can’t wait to see her as a bride. You’ll notice in the pictures the flowers Sassafras did for the shoot. Gorgeous! I love that succulent bouquet soo much.

Not only are they in love, but they balance each other out. Luke is more practical, Margaret is more of a dreamer. Ah, love is amazing.

I love these last two! Margaret + Luke you guys are wonderful and I can’t wait for your wedding this fall! Hope you enjoyed the pictures and stay tuned for round two tomorrow morning!

It’s always exciting to photograph something new. Sometimes it’s the people that inspire you, the props, the location, but hopefully it’s all of the above. It’s not always easy to have those three elements come together as it takes more planning and collaborating, but as you can see it’s totally worth it. I’ve been planning on doing a unique session like this for a while, and wanted to use it as a starting point for other sessions… so this is just the beginning. I hope to collaborate like this with other couples and come up with totally unique and creative images so let me know if you want to be involved.  This photo makes it look effortless, but if you saw the car full of props we brought with us and the hiking we did out to our locations you would be impressed. Margaret and Luke were the perfect couple to try anything and incorporated their own style and personality into the shoot, which made it even more successful. I’ll write more on planning a session like this and show you the rest of the images soon!

Not too long ago, before all of the snow, I headed north of Harrisonburg to Glenmont Farm. It was there that I met with Dee and Melissa and their daughters Gabby and Hannah. The girls were entering a new division of competition with their horses, so they needed some portraits to document this time. I know there are photographers who specialize in equestrian photography… and if you are one such person you will have to let me know how I did. While I don’t have that same expertise in horses, I brought my style and point of view to the shoot. As I learned one of the challenges was directing both girl and horse – while normally I am just thinking about people and their placement, expression, and actions, when you add in animals it’s a new game. The main concern was making sure the horses ears were forward, so we did a lot to get their attention. They are such gorgeous animals I felt lucky to do such a fun session, and it was thanks to Jodi Miller who referred me since she was out of town. Thanks Jodi!

Today I drove a north of Harrisonburg to Glenmont Farm; there is so much beautiful farmland in Virgina and Glenmont is no exception. I had a great shoot with Hannah, Gabby, and their horses and here’s a little look at what I captured.

While today’s shoot was great I also have to admit I was exhausted. Let’s just say I had a few phone conversations and most of them started with “did I just wake you up?” Unfortunately that was never the case, I think I just sounded tired all day. Yesterday was our first indoor track meet (as you know my husband coaches xc+track and I am an assistant) and we had a really long day. It was a great meet and I was so glad to be there as I’m obviously not able to make it to all of them since I’ll be shooting weddings.

I feel soo much better today after dinner because we had my favorite meal. It’s been working it’s way up my favorites chart for a while, and I think I’m going to give it the number one spot… at least for winter (do you categorize your food favs by season?). So what is this number one?

Matt’s Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup. I know what you’re thinking – oh I like homemade chicken noodle soup too – and although I haven’t tasted your soup, I think mine is better. This recipe is all creamy delicious broth expect for the chicken and homemade – yes, they have to be homemade – noodles. I could eat just the broth it’s so good and packed with flavor and would share it with you if I could. Now, this is totally Matt’s recipe- or at least his adopted recipe since he really found it in Emeril’s Del Monico cookbook and made just a few alternations, so if you want I can share it with you to try at home.

Well I need to get to bed early tonight so I’m productive tomorrow. Off to bed!