A two-parter camera party, thanks to dreary rain happenings, however we welcomed the extra time with these two. As can tell from the images, they take themselves quite seriously, have a crazy-straw fetish, and are indecisive about kitchen colors. Two out of three of these things are true.
We’ll be in and out of the studio for the next few weeks on some wedding adventures. However, please don’t hesitate to contact us as the internet is generally within reach. Also-as a special weekend treat, hope you enjoy this whimsical short clip, with a guest appearance from Boris the cat.
As some of you may know, design was my first love. I’ve also recently left a web design job and we’re two months into “going commando” as I like to call it. (Joel doesn’t get my analogy, but if you think of the jobs as underwear…and now we don’t have day jobs…makes total sense.) Maybe a Clark Kent vs. Superman analogy would work better.
So now, much of my design work is wedding-related, such as this inspiration board for an invite. This was pre-Pinterest, but I’ve traced back most of these web snags (as well as hunting down the rest) and posted them on my pinboards here. Feel free to re-pin or link-wander off some of these inspirations. It’s a bit contagious and possibly a time-suck, but a fun one, for sure! 
Hope you enjoy!
Flip-flops, a variety of the ugliest dresses we could find from a thrift store, and yes, the man behind Joel is wearing a skirt. (He was really good friends with both of us and couldn’t pick a side.) I’m wearing a friend’s old prom dress (because it was white and fit with some tweaking) and Joel is pimpin’ his band tux from college. There were also two blow-up football characters at our wedding, representative of our friends who were in Iraq and couldn’t be there; one of them had a cigarette taped to his face as he was a smoker. Indeed, those are our matching toes-Joel was a princess that day, and well…every day really.
We lit sparklers out of that unity candle and it turned black; we kept a few years but think it has since been thrown away in one of the moves. We have no idea where those glasses went, I wore those white flip-flops around years afterward until they also had to be thrown out. That arbor that we helped Joel’s parent’s build now has an extended patio on it, where there’s a fire pit to gather around. We used the friend’s large dress, with the print on the end, as a shower curtain in an apartment somewhere along the way. I had a dressmaker cut up my dress to surprise Joel for our five year anniversary; she made two skirts and a shirt out of it.
Our photographer was the wife of Joel’s dad’s co-workers, I think is how that traced back, and these wedding pics had to be scanned in and emailed to us as the pictures we have are still in boxes. That’s totally a picture of my veil over his head, and I’m not sure why Joel is being held up by his friends, but there it is.
The friend (green dress) immediately behind me, was running around that day taking shots with my 35mm Minolta that I’d bought for the one photo class I took in college. I loaded it with some slide film and said just get a few shots of whatever you find that’s cool, then had it cross-processed. I think those are the pictures that are tucked into a box with us, and are our favorites from the day. I’m riding around on Joel’s back, we’re goofing around with the cake that had daisies on it, picked from the creek at the end of the yard. A month later, our friend there in the yellow dress, got married and needed a person with a camera and called us the day before the wedding. We had a camera. Then the friend in the purple dress got married and we also had a camera then. Pretty soon it was strangers that wanted to pay us, and we got two cameras.
Eight years later, we realize these images are nothing like what we would want today, but neither is the wedding and I think that’s the point; that people evolve and grow-up together. This was us during a brief time in our lives, with three months of “planning” while in school, and the fact that we had this experience with pictures, helps push us to we make the ones that we do now. We wouldn’t change anything as it was through the amazing help of our friends and family that even made it at all possible. I remember friends painting our cake topper that day, laying mulch in the front yard, Joel picking out music 5 minutes before the ceremony, learning how to make pavers by trial and error, and saying “sure” a lot to his mom while I worked on school projects. Maybe on our ten year we’ll give it another go…flip-flops and fancy toes would probably still be involved.
What I do wish we’d had the foresight to do was take a camera with us to Steak ‘N’ Shake (a 24 hr burger joint, as we’d forgotten to eat the grill-goodies from earlier in the night) and the midnight movie we saw at the $2 theatre (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) in our full wedding garb afterward.
Meet two lovely people with a fondness for worms, sloths, and T-Rex high-fives.
Most importantly, a fondness for each other that’ll be getting the legal stamp of togetherness approval this weekend.
[column width="48%" padding="2%"]Before spring really takes hold and we’re sweating, complaining about how hot it is, wanted to share this pre-wedding celebration on Mt. Hood. Rachael and Alex actually met on a ski-lift, so thought it was fitting to have a gathering with close friends and family go skiing the day before their wedding.
Joel even skied and went down the mountain (camera gear in tow) with his ski that literally broke in half at the binding. I’m coordinated-challenged, so got to tool around with a guy on a snow cat! [/column] [column width="48%" padding="2%"]Certainly enjoyed the change of scenery, and felt spoiled by the fact that within an hour from our home we can experience such diversity. Also glad to say we are now weather-tested, like a high-performance piece of outdoor gear; from 110 degrees in the desert, to 30 degrees on a snowy mountain. [/column]
