Weddingbee Blog

So where I last left you, we had finished our Mad Men themed hotel pictures and were heading back to our room to change into our second look for the day. This was by far the best thing about having a room where we were taking pictures—no changing in public places for us, and it gave me the chance to completely revamp my look.

For the second look, I decided to wear my hair down (and I just retouched it a bit with a curling iron), put on some red lipstick (a much better choice than my first look which wore off almost instantly!) and we checked out of the hotel. Our photographer was super patient throughout all of this—checking out was a bit of a fiasco—but finally we were ready for our shoot—Part Two.

All photos by Mike Landis Photographer

One of my favorites from the day!

What’s a photo shoot without the shoe shot? Mike was actually laying on the boards for this one!

Another favorite!

I have so much love for this picture, too!

If you look closely, you can see my owl earrings!

Once we finished shooting on the boardwalk, we walked down past the Chelsea to their annex hotel—which has this restaurant modeled after a diner from the 1950′s. What a perfect place to continue our shoot. As luck would have it, it was relatively slow when we went in and there was no one seated at the counter. They graciously allowed us to take some photos! We did order a milkshake—because who doesn’t love a prop that you can actually enjoy—but they didn’t actually require us to buy anything to take pictures.

The outside of the diner

While we were waiting for the milkshake, Mike told us to just talk and act natural. I am constantly twirling my hair when I talk, and this is a very typical Lyre face. Usually Mr. Ly has said something ridiculous, and this is the face he gets:

Probably the most serious I looked all day!

Once the milkshake arrived, we got to enjoy a tasty treat and get some really great shots!

In the diner, we also did a few of these forehead to forehead shots:

The following shot is what we thought was going to be our last one of us for the day…Mike told me it was OK to kiss Mr. Ly for real (I kept getting red lipstick ALL over him—so I had been faking it!):

But then Mr. Ly pulls out one more stop for our pictures. He brought with him our mustache monocles, which he had purchased from Geek Chic at a video game conference (PAX East for all you gamers out there) this past April. He has been known to just sneak these in every once in a while, when he thinks I’ll least expect it. A friend’s wedding over the summer, his sister’s derby party and now our engagement pictures.

We were sitting (my feet hurt!) while Mike was photographing my ring, so we started posing with them. And once again, Mr. Ly gets the last photos in that he wants.

We had so many great photos to choose from and I had a really hard timing selecting which ones to share. I can not imagine how difficult it will be to recap after the wedding!! Our photographer did an amazing job capturing the theme we wanted for the first part of the shoot, and then more casual ones of just us with a bit of a retro flair for the second part. While I love the first half of the shoot, and put so much time into planning it, my favorite shots definitely came from the pictures of us, being us. There’s something to be said for just being yourself in your photos, and that really shines through here.

Would you ever consider doing a themed shoot? Did anyone else’s fiance have specific shots they wanted?