Weddingbee Blog

After a full week of absolute gluttony and decadence while on our Relaximoon, it was time for us to put on our wedding attire for the last time and pose as bride and groom. We had gone back and forth so many times about whether the hometown reception was a good idea, or even necessary, but now that it’s over I’m really glad we took the time to spend some time with the community that helped raise me.

I wish I had a camera in my hand as we drove up the road to the reception site. Our dear friends who hosted the party for us had sprinkled their property with lamps, torches, and twinkling lights. It looked magical. Guests were directed to park in a lot a few hundred yards from the house, and if they didn’t feel like walking (it was a cold October night!), they were escorted up to the house on golf carts.

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If after purchasing a flight to Vegas, coughing up at least $100/night for a hotel room, and emptying your wallet for each and every meal, you still have some money to spare, you will buy a pass to go to the classes at WPPI (I was able to go for free as a guest of my mom and I’m still mourning the fact that I didn’t get a seat in Elizabeth Messina’s class).

If you don’t have that kind of money, or the inclination to spend it that way, you are like the majority of photographers who skip out on the classes and go for the more cost effective trade show-only passes (for the networking, of course!).

Speaking of networking, the business card exchange at WPPI reminds me of when I used to exchange and trade Pogs when I was in elementary school. It’s definitely the “in” thing to do at WPPI. If I had a business card, it would have said: Mrs. Avocado. Weddingbee Blogger. Visit Weddingbee to read all about my wedding that I didn’t choose you to photograph.

My three favorite cards were from Leo Patrone, Bobbi+Mike, and Jonathan Canlas (all letterpress and all so beautiful).

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WPPI taught me something. I went to WPPI and realized that all the photography bloggers I read are just students of the medium, much like myself (although in a much more advanced stage). It wasn’t until I attended my first WPPI event that I learned who the masters in the wedding/portrait photography industry are.

The thousands of people pictured in the photo below by Lynn-Kai Chao are all wedding and portrait photographers. And every single one of these photographers from around the world are watching 5 people show them how they take such amazing pictures.

Are you curious about who the masters were?
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WPPI is the largest gathering of wedding and portrait photographers in the entire world, and when that many cameras converge in the same place, photo shoots are bound to happen. The subjects are sometimes “real” people (posing for engagement shoots or bridals), but usually they are local models. Between the photography conference and bunches of Valentine’s Day weddings, it’s a tough weekend to rent a wedding dress (I know, because we did it!).

A lot of the shoots are “group shoots”, with lots of photographers gathering around the same subject. What you see below is actually a shoot happening for a class my mom was taking (she is standing in the far left side of this photo holding the camera to her face). My mom flew in a few days before the conference officially started to take a class with one of the world’s best portrait photographers, Bambi Cantrell. I’m pretty sure my mom mentioned that Bambi photographed the family of Vanessa Williams once, and that her photo shoots can sometimes cost upwards of $100,000. The classes sound really fun, with a few hours of classroom instruction with the pro, and then some time with professional models attempting to reenact the principles that were just taught in the classroom.

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In February I met up with my mom in Vegas for a convention known as WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International), to spend some time with her and to play. And, to meet Miss Dumpling, of course! I called Mr. Avocado each night bursting with excitement about all of the new things I was seeing and learning.

I’ll admit this first post is slightly gratuitous, a chance to show you some of my favorite shots from my week in Vegas, and give you an idea what I was doing when I wasn’t at the convention.

After entirely too many hours at the airport (canceled flight, no seats on stand-by, etc.) I was very happy to check in to our vintage film-inspired hotel room. There is just something about old Hollywood that always leaves me sighing.

That night I met up with fellow bee Miss Dumpling! She is gorgeous and funny and awesomely self-deprecating. She’s incredibly easy to fall head-over-heels in love with. Don’t you love those kinds of people?
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I’m sure you thought the wedding posts were over by now. I’ve taken you through 28 posts, detailing everything from the moment I woke up, to our Seattle skyline finale. But, I loved my wedding so much that I found a way to drag out it all the way until the next weekend, with an after wedding shoot and a hometown reception.

The biggest reason for having a semi-TTD (I hesitate to call it such because there weren’t any activities that even hinted at trashing since I had to wear it in front of family and friends the next day), was to capitalize on the chance to do a shoot with my mom, Denise Andersen. I didn’t realize how much pride I would feel each time someone came over to my married apartment and said, “I love this picture, who took it?” I’ve watched my mom practice her craft for years, and after years and years of taking pictures she can do some really fantastic stuff (as evidenced by my bridal portraits in Rome).

Mr. Avocado made one last huge sacrifice, and took these pictures with me on our honeymoon. My advice to you if you are considering the same thing? Prepare to look a little puffy from the gastronomic indulgences you will be making while taking your ultimate vacation. One night we sat in our bed and ate a huge wedge of cheese with crackers and finished it off with an enormous piece of chocolate cake. No wonder our faces look puffy in most of these photos.

If you remember, there are no photos taken inside the temple, and because of this I had no pictures of me wearing my mom’s wedding dress and veil from the wedding day. After working so hard to lose 50 lbs over the last 3 years, I was happy to find I could even squeeze myself into the dress at all. My mom had something like a $400 wedding, and she hated her dress, but I’m in love with the meaning behind it.

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Marriage has made us poor. It’s not that we don’t have the same amount of money that we did before, it’s that suddenly we have all these extra expenses I didn’t know about (chalk this up to me being a young silly girl who was still partially supported by her parents when she got married).

With rent, utilities, savings, cars, and so many other practical items to contribute to, our entertainment/eating out budget has been substantially reduced. Since I do all of the cooking, eating out is a special treat that I really enjoy, so we needed to find a way to be able to go out and feel pampered without breaking the bank.

Enter Deluxe Food Date Night.

Instead of going out to eat once or twice (or several) times a week, we only eat out together once a month. He frequently eats out on the company dime, but both of us are very strict about not eating out using our personal budget unless it is on this special night together (except for the occasional dish of gelato at Paciugos).

A little place called Aurora has been my absolute favorite so far. Aren’t those little vegetables the cutest?

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I don’t write stories very often, but whenever I do I have a hard time coming up with an ending. My endings always end up sounding trite, or abrupt. I often put the story off to the side and end up forgetting about it because I can’t find a way to write in the perfect ending. Telling the story of our wedding day is the one instance where I’m not left feeling this way.

The original plan was to drive with our photographer out to a park with the Seattle skyline in the background, and have one last photo shoot for the day. But by the end of dinner I was so tired. All I wanted was to be done with the day, and I told Kelli that we weren’t going to go to the park and that after the exit she was done shooting.

I assumed Mr. Avocado was feeling the same way I was, but when I told him about my decision, he did one of the most thoughtful things he has ever done for me. He reminded me how much I loved the inspirational photos I had found, the shots that gave me the idea to do the skyline shoot. He put aside his own exhaustion and encouraged me to go through with the shoot. We only went up to the park for about 20 minutes, but the photographs we have are just stunning. We look tired, and our facial expressions in most of them aren’t the best, but they so perfectly sum up the wedding for us. A classic storybook ending if I’ve ever seen one.

I’m very excited to have this hanging on our wall sometime soon!

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I was one of those brides who had the unfortunate experience of switching event coordinators at the venue. Donna did an incredible job and the transition was very smooth, except for the agreements previously made about what Hotel 1000 would allow our guests to throw at us at the end of the night. I was frustrated, to put it mildly, when I was told that all of the ecofetti I had invested in was no longer allowed. I forwarded them back the email from the previous coordinator, packed up the ecofetti, and decided that I would instruct the DOC to hand out the packets no matter what.

My rebellion against the system wasn’t even necessary because Donna ended up telling me just before dinner that we could go ahead and do the exit with the ecofetti. I don’t know that it will be so, but I hope that after seeing these photos, Hotel 1000 will allow brides to have this environmentally friendly option at their own weddings.

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Recognize this adorable lady standing next to me?

Punam!

I’m in Vegas this week at the largest gathering of wedding photographers in the entire world.
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If you have been reading my posts throughout the planning process I apologize for regurgitating this information for the third time, but can you blame me for wanting to visit such a hilarious event one last time?

Pokładziny-The Bedding Down

In ancient times, putting the bridal pair to bed was a normal and expected part of the marriage customs, and was done with much joking and hilarity. The young couple was directed by the entire wedding party to a room that had been specially prepared for them.

The swat, still overseeing that all went according to custom, placed himself on the marriage bed to “warm it up”. The womenfolk jumped up and down on the bed to make sure it could hold up and now break down. Rocks or sharp straw or thorns might have been placed underneath the sheets are removed. The swat and swata then chased everyone out of the room and took the bride and groom to the bed and left them alone. The door was locked behind them and after serenading the bridal couple with some very warm and bawdy songs, along with vodka toasts and admonitions “not to be lazy”, the couple was left alone.

The next morning, musicians awoke the couple and gave them kasza cooked in milk and vodka that had been dyed red as a sign of lost virginity. The sheets were inspected for the expected stain that meant the loss of virginity. This made everybody happy and was the cause of more singing and dancing.

From “Polish Customs, Traditions and Folklore” by Sophie Hodorowicz Knab

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Bittersweet Hazelnut
Chocolate Raspberry Rhapsody
Chocolate Truffle
Chocolate Velvet Torte
Chocolate White Chocolate
Lemon Coconut
Lemon Blueberry
Strawberry White Chocolate

I cannot think of anything better than a cake buffet at a wedding.

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Throughout our planning process I kept hearing of this thing called a cake pull. From what I understood, it was a Southern wedding tradition, and it happened at the bridal shower. Charms were buried inside of a cake and pulled out by a ribbon, with each charm corresponding to a fortune. I loved this idea, but I wasn’t having a bridal shower where all my favorite ladies would be present.

My solution to this dilemma was to incorporate the tradition into the wedding day! Sounds like a great idea right? Well, it was in theory, but it didn’t quite work out as well as I would have hoped.

Since we had a cake buffet (lots of yummy cake pictures to come!), I simply asked the catering staff to stuff my charms directly into the cake right before the event was to happen. I’m sure they were all standing around in the back talking about the crazy bride (that is the kind of thing I did when I used to cater weddings).

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When I brought up the idea of doing toasts that included flutes of sparkling cider I expected my dad to say, “No way.” He can be a little bit on the conservative side at times (not like I’m not conservative myself), and although we drink sparkling cider ourselves at holidays, I thought he might say no because of how it would look in the photos. I was pleasantly surprised to find out he was on board with the idea, and it was a good thing because we were well under our catering minimum before this point and I needed a way to beef up menu a little bit.

I’m going to do what 99% of brides do at this point and say that our toasts were awesome. They included the story of how we came to be as related by the best man, some Polish from a real Pole, a little sister tattling on the bride, a teary eyed father, a bride that planned everything except her speech, and an introverted groom ending things on just the right note. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself.

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As soon as I saw this post on the blog of Ksenija Savic (who might just have a harder name to say than I do!), I commented and asked her if I could re-post it here. I loved Anne Ruthmann’s post on Weddingbee PRO that talked about this very subject (and in fact, Ksenija’s post was inspired by Anne’s post). Ksenija took things a step further and broke down in hours how long each step of the process takes.

All the words and photos past this point are by Ksenija herself. I hope this helps you understand just a little bit better what it takes to process a wedding.

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Why does it take so long to receive my wedding/portrait images?

(Heather & I decided to collaborate on the verbiage for this post!)

While we haven’t had anyone ask us these questions, at times we wish they would! We wonder if people might be asking themselves these questions, or if they perhaps want to know more about the logistics of it all!

Let’s use a wedding as an example! Here are the basic steps of the process we fine art photographers go through the minute your session or wedding is over.

Step one:
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