Bicoastal_Bride

Boudoir photo sessions seem to be all the rage this year, with brides-to-be and newlyweds alike surprising their grooms with stylish and flirty photos that run the gamut from sweetly sexy to boldly risqué.

The more I read about these sassy shoots, the more I’m impressed by the number of women who say that although the session was first intended as a gift to the groom, in the end, it was a gift to the bride, instilling a greater sense of confidence and empowerment. Still, as a fairly modest girl, I’m not sure how comfortable I’d feel going before the camera for a shoot like this, or whether I’d be able to loosen up enough to allow the photographer to really capture the best shots.

What do you say, girls? Have you done a boudoir session, or is it something you’d consider? If so, what advice do you have for brides and newlyweds thinking about giving it a go?

So far, for me, I guess this is about as daring as it gets…

 For His Eyes Only: Boudoir Photography
(Photo Credit: Damien Smith Photography)
September 2, 2010 by Bicoastal_Bride | Filed under: Wedding Etiquette & Advice,Wedding Photos & Video | 0 Comments
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Bicoastal_Bride

The man I married is my best friend and partner in all things – the silly, the serious, the life-changing, and the mundane. He is gentle, sincere, thoughtful and genuine, and he looked so handsome and happy on our wedding day.

 The Man I Married
Some people think that wedding day portraits are all about the bride, but I disagree. Stephen looked amazing, and he did it without a $200 makeup application or a $1,000 gown.
 The Man I Married
 The Man I Married
 The Man I Married
 The Man I Married
LESSON LEARNED: A good photographer will be sure to capture a few great portrait shots of the groom, but if he or she seems to be forgetting, or if you’d like more, be sure to speak up. After all, it’s your husband’s day, too!
Do you have any favorite wedding day or engagement shots of your guy?

(Photo Credits: Alex Neumann Photography)

August 27, 2010 by Bicoastal_Bride | Filed under: Groom's Guide,Wedding Photos & Video | 1 Comment
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BekaPaige
We were happy, we were joyful, and we were just having fun hamming it up in front of the camera. We started at the mansion, just holding each other and reveling in the fact that we were going to get married today.
Bekka%26Sean1+286 No Jitters, Only Smiles
Bekka%26Sean1+305 No Jitters, Only Smiles

Then we brought in family and friends. My parents, and his. My family, and his. My girls. His boys. All of us. But you’re not interested in all of those pictures of people you don’t actually know, are you :)

Bekka%26Sean1+410 No Jitters, Only Smiles
Bekka%26Sean1+539 No Jitters, Only Smiles
Bekka%26Sean1+649 No Jitters, Only Smiles

Then we went downtown. Where we were alone. At a grain elevator. In front of one of the oldest newspapers in the state. In an alleyway as people drove past and stared.
August 26, 2010 by BekaPaige | Filed under: Ceremony and Vows,Wedding Photos & Video | 3 Comments
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Bicoastal_Bride

In my long string of examples showing just how awesome our photographer Alex was, there’s one that truly stands out for me.

You may recall that I was completely bummed when I discovered that the church wouldn’t allow flower petals to line the aisle or be thrown by guests after the ceremony. There went one of my top romantic visions for our day.

Or so I thought.

As it turns out, I underestimated Alex’s creativity and foresight. Try if you can to imagine my sheer and utter delight when he showed up on our wedding day toting – what else? – a bag of flower petals!

Granted, these were silk, and there weren’t as many as I’d have brought in had I been allowed to go all out. But I didn’t care! They were petals nonetheless, were there on my wedding day, and had a light pink shade that even matched up with some of the accent colors in my bouquet. Life was good, and I loved the way Alex worked them in throughout the celebration.

My favorite part? He managed to snap a couple shots during the ceremony of petals scattered in the aisle. Take that, church rules!

 Flower Power: A Wedding Day Dream Realized
 Flower Power: A Wedding Day Dream Realized
And of course, the evening wouldn’t have been complete without a few shots of the bride herself in a shower of flowers.
 Flower Power: A Wedding Day Dream Realized
 Flower Power: A Wedding Day Dream Realized
 Flower Power: A Wedding Day Dream Realized
 Flower Power: A Wedding Day Dream Realized
Did your photographer surprise you by showing up with props or having creative ideas you never would have expected? Do you plan to use flower petals on your wedding day?

(Photo Credits: Alex Neumann Photography)

Check out Get Married’s feature on this beautiful trend in weddings! Watch Video!

August 24, 2010 by Bicoastal_Bride | Filed under: Floral & Decor,Wedding Photos & Video | 1 Comment
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Bicoastal_Bride

…the best photos can be found!

While creating our wedding day timeline, it was absolutely vital to both us and our photographer that we set aside time for sunset photos on the grounds of Los Robles Greens. And what a great decision it was.

In the end, this shoot gave us some of the very best photos from the day. It also allowed us to momentarily take a breather from the crazy but fun pace of our reception for some time alone with our photographer, who occasionally stepped back to let us reflect on the day and spend a few moments focusing only on each other.

To show you just what I mean, here’s a big handful of favorites that still make me smile, whether they’re romantic, artsy, or just plain fun.

 When The Sun Goes Down…
 When The Sun Goes Down…
 When The Sun Goes Down…
August 23, 2010 by Bicoastal_Bride | Filed under: Wedding Photos & Video | 2 Comments
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caitlin1122

I have been thinking about creating photo sharing cards to include with the koozies we are giving out as favors. I found a business card template on Vistaprint today that I loved so I finally created them! I am planning on putting them on top of the collapsible koozie and tying them on with raffia. I got 250 of them for less than $10! I think this is a great idea for a small addition to your wedding. I know so many pictures will be added to facebook but if any are good, I wouldn’t be able to print them from facebook and have them be good quality!

Untitled 600x341 Photo Sharing CardsJust a screen shot of the card so it’s not great quality!

August 19, 2010 by caitlin1122 | Filed under: Wedding Photos & Video | 2 Comments
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Born to be Mrs. Beever
I don’t want to keep bringing up the frustration I felt over our whole photographer situation.  In all honesty, looking back in hindsight, it was what it was and I just need to get over it.  Of course, having a little post wedding shoot last week to capture some of the shots we wanted that we didn’t get certainly helped me feel a little less disappointed about all the things that were not done on the day of the wedding.  Even after all that I was upset about, I still can’t complain about not having *any* photos that were good from our wedding.  Because there were in fact quite a few that we absolutely loved.
To prove it, I am giving you a sneak peek into our wedding album.  I received this about two months ago, but was holding off on sharing it until I got a little further into my wedding recaps because I didn’t want to give away too much.  And I have to give credit to my videographer’s wife, Yan Freedline, as a good 25% of the images in this album came from her and *not* our photographer.  There’s even a couple that were from our family and friends’ cameras.
Check it out:
I designed this photo album myself using Shutterfly.com.  I LOVE Shutterfly!  Their photo albums are high quality and unlike most DIY photo album web sites, they have a huge amount of flexibility and such in the way of templates, options for backgrounds, colors, layouts, adding text, etc.  And to top it off, they are super affordable!  This 12 x 12 inch hard cover album only cost me about $141.00 total for 91 pages including tax and shipping.  And it has about 437 photos from our wedding day in it!
Now, don’t get me wrong, I did time it just right when ordering by waiting until they were having a 20% off sale and also finding a coupon code online for free shipping.  :)
I love this album!  In addition, I made 5 copies of an 8 x 8 soft cover book of about 20 or so pages for each of my bridesmaids.  It had a few photos of me and us getting ready and mostly focused on images of each of them or all of the bridesmaids.  Then I made another 5 copies of an 8 x 8 hard cover book of about 40 pages for each of our moms and the groomsmen (only the ones who were Mr Fix It’s brothers).  It was like a mini album of our wedding but focused on their family as well.
Share time:  Ladies, are you creating your own photo albums or did you go the pro route and have your photographer or a studio design one for you?  What were your thoughts, reviews and other suggestions regarding wedding photo albums?

TODAY’S WEDDING TIP: When deciding on a photographer, don’t feel like you have to contract them for their services as well as a high end wedding photo album.  You can save money by asking them to simply provide you all of the high resolution images on disc format so that you can decide to purchase an album or prints later.  Most photogs offer this nowadays and also offer online services to order individual prints from as well.  You can always go back later and order a high end album or a simple hard cover DIY album from a site like I did.

by Born to be Mrs. Beever | Filed under: Wedding Photos & Video | 3 Comments
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Born to be Mrs. Beever
Last Tuesday I got to put my Maggie Sottero SaBelle gown on one last time and Mr Fix It put on one of his nice black suits and we met up at our wedding venue, Rancho Las Lomas with a wonderfully fun and talented photographer from Las Vegas, Rachel Garcia of Brilliant Imagery.
My cousin Amber did up my daughter’s hair and makeup – so well in fact that I almost wish I would have had her do it for the wedding, too :)   She did such a great job that we have found a new stylist to help with future dances and such.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any sneak peek pics of Little Miss just yet but Rachel tells me she has at least 300 + photos she will be sending us after she has had a chance to edit them.  We spent a little over 2 1/2 hours walking the grounds and trying to come up with some unique poses at locations we missed the first time around.
Unfortunately, Rachel got sick right after the shoot and hasn’t had much time to work on editing the images, but she did take a moment to send me over a few quick pics from the evening.  And I have to say that I am so excited to see them all because with just these 7 that she sent over, we already have 6 different locations that we did not hit on the wedding day and the artistic style she was going for has truly sparked our interest to see them all.
This image was a better ring shot than the one we got from the wedding day with Mr Fix It holding the rings out on an orange from the orange orchard.  My daughter was trying to get him to recreate the Twilight book cover but he had no idea what we were talking about :)
Brilliant Imagery Rancho Las Lamos rings on oranges Sneak Peek at our Post Wedding Photos

While this is not the clearest image, it is kind of cool and I can assure you that we have a good amount more photos coming from this location with us actually looking *at* the camera :)

Brilliant Imagery Rancho Las Lamos bride and groom looking at white tiger Sneak Peek at our Post Wedding Photos

Both Mr Fix It and I love this photo Rachel took through the gate at the fish pond.   We are actually standing on a little bridge that jets out into the fish pond.

(more…)

August 18, 2010 by Born to be Mrs. Beever | Filed under: Wedding Photos & Video | 3 Comments
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Bicoastal_Bride

Though I managed to stay relatively “unplugged” during our Hawaiian honeymoon, you’d better believe I was all over Facebook every evening, on the prowl for a sneak peek at our guests’ wedding photos.

And they didn’t disappoint, on Facebook or otherwise. Within just a week of giving out photo-share cards, which our coordinator set at each guest’s table setting before the reception, close to one thousand pictures had been uploaded to our Shutterfly site.

 Photo Share Success
Going into the wedding, we knew this would likely be the case, since we have a very camera-friendly group of friends and relatives. In fact, the majority of the photos were taken by just two people – my bridesmaid Pooneh and her mom!

Here, a few of my wedding day favorites that were not shot by the pros.

 Photo Share Success
 Photo Share Success
 Photo Share Success
 Photo Share Success
 Photo Share Success
 Photo Share Success
 Photo Share Success
LESSON LEARNED: Whether you end up with a thousand pictures or just one, providing photo-share cards to your guests is definitely worth doing. Creating the cards is a simple DIY you can do at home, as is setting up an account on Shutterfly or another site you prefer. You never know what fun and original shots you might end up with, some of which could even become favorites from the entire day! Guests can often capture smaller details that the pros don’t have a chance to catch, or offer a totally different perspective of the celebration.
Plus, this option allows guests to order whichever photos they like, without coming to you in the busy weeks immediately following the wedding.

Do you plan to give out photo-share cards at your wedding?

(Photo Credits: Alex Neumann Photography & Personal Library)

August 17, 2010 by Bicoastal_Bride | Filed under: Wedding Photos & Video | 1 Comment
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Beach Bride

It’s been a whirlwind for the past three weeks, but I’m finally back and married. I can’t believe a year of planning can go by in such a flash.

My wedding day, all in all, definitely did not fall short of being the best day of my life. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t be happier to finally be married to my best friend, everyone really seemed to enjoy the wedding more than I ever could have dreamed. During the reception, there was not a second that the dance floor was unoccupied, and for the majority of the wedding it was PACKED! Our DJ said we made his job really easy, but I think it was the opposite… he did such a fantastic job with the music that our guests didn’t want to leave the dance floor! I’ll post more about this in a future update.

Of course, like all other weddings, we did run into a snag. The weather forecast the morning of the wedding said 86 degrees and sunny all day. Despite how hot that might be, we were thrilled. No rain… or so we thought. We went through the whole ceremony, got into the limo on the way to the reception, and suddenly started hearing the emergency broadcast service on the radio. We had to listen to it twice before we looked out the rear window of the limo to see a GIANT black cloud following us. We told the limo driver to hurry up so we could make it to take pictures before the cloud did!

Luckily, the cloud cover did wonders for our picture-taking (at least according to our photographer)… there was no glare, no squinting. But we probably set a Guinness world record for the fastest formals of all time. By the time we started to feel drops and immediately got back into the limo to get inside at the reception venue, it downpoured. We got inside just in the nick of time… and when we got in, we found the manager of the venue scrambling to take down the cocktail hour setup that he had put outside based on the beautiful weather forecast! So much for meteorologists!!

But I must say, I’m grateful that we at least got to take some great pictures during “the calm before the storm,” and even got a few minutes to take some more pictures after the rain ended and before we were seated for dinner. So far we have only seen one “sneak peek” professional picture, but based on this one I can’t wait to see more!

Kevinandmelaniewedding1 200x300 Im married!

And besides, they say rain on your wedding day is supposed to be good luck, so I should be a lucky girl!

Image courtesy of LeFebvre Photo

by Beach Bride | Filed under: Wedding Photos & Video | 3 Comments
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