Anne & Phil's Mountaintop Wedding

I just got back from Upstate New York where Anne and Phil had their mountaintop wedding at Hunter Mountain.

It was SO unique and amazing and beautiful and just plain fabulous.

I arrived Friday afternoon in time for rehearsal. MAO of course already looked stunning in her little white practice dress.



Crazy-eyes and all.



Everyone was super smiley and pretty...



Before rehearsal, our wedding coordinator Tracy showed us a bunch of pictures from previous weddings so that we could get "ideas" and "inspiration". All the brides that had previously wedded at Hunter Mountain were BEASTS.

I don't they'd ever seen a bride of Anne's caliber. So I was excited for them to find out what a perfect bride SHOULD look like.




A little rehearsal dinner BBQ and minigolf and then it was wedding day.

Wedding day started pretty relaxed with the boys and girls getting ready separately, obviously.




(Isn't it cute how it looks like they were texting each other? Both those shots were totally staged, I just made them pull out their respective devices and said, "Laugh at your phone!")



Little Japanese Origami Cranes were a theme throughout the wedding. These could be found EVERYWHERE. Anne and her mom and dad had folded THOUSANDS of them.



After two hours of self-hair and makeup, the bride was ready to go. We LOVES a naturally gorgeous low-maintenance bride!



One of the coolest parts of the whole wedding was riding up to the summit (where the ceremony was to be held) in giant six-seater chairlifts.



It took 11 minutes of high-speed six-seater chair to reach the top, and once there the view was aweeeeeesomeeeee.



Love these guys!



Following the ceremony, the reception was held in the resort's Copper Tree restaurant.

The floral and branch and paper crane centerpieces were some of the most beautiful and unique things I've ever seen at a wedding.




I kept thinking that Anne looked like Belle.

And Felix made the observation that she basically just looks like a magazine model-bride.



There was a REALLY ghetto photobooth in the corner of the room. It was intentionally and unintentionally hilarious.




And there was a band and they played awesome song after awesome song and we sang and danced like crazypeople.





(And did a little photobombing.)




It was SO FUN!




Then finally there was the "group photo".

Anne's parents had planned a spectacular surprise, but in order to pull off the surprise they needed my help getting everyone together for a "group photo".

So I instructed everyone to go outside for a group photo of the ENTIRE wedding. As people interrupted their dancing and drinking and conversations and filed out to the patio, I could hear their grumbling annoyance and could feel them quietly (and not-so-quietly) judging me. After all, there was NO WAY a giant group picture like that would work, especially in pitch black darkness. You didn't need to be a photographer to know that.

There was a snafu and slight delay in getting the surprise going.

So I stalled and stalled, just snapping pictures of this massive group and looking like the MOST INEPT photographer in the WORLD. People were like, "COME ON!!! This is a waste of time!!!" It was slightly mortifying.

And these pictures? They WERE terrible...





But FINALLY came the surprise.

A gorgeous 15-minute private FIREWORK show!!!!





It was spectacular.



Finally we had to head to the afterparty and I quickly ran around drunkenly collecting paper cranes from around the ballroom because I had this vision of hundreds of little cranes flying through the air at the happy couple.



Anne's face when she realized what was about to happen was priceless.



I'm sorry. We need a close-up.



And my vision was executed pretty much perfectly!



Congratulations Anne and Phil! AMAAAAZING WEDDING!

Why I love Mondays / Morgan's Wedding!

When in the midst of Wedding Season, Mondays are often the days I look forward to most.

Mondays are the day when most of my heavy work (actually running around and shooting the wedding) is done. And if I really love the bride/groom whose I wedding I shot on Saturday, I'll have worked all day Sunday, editing, retouching, and prepping pictures for immediate upload to Facebook, since these days rando guests are already posting their crappy iPhone photos from the event and the novelty of the wedding and the new union wears off pretty quickly in cyberworld.

So getting at least a selection of top pics turned around ASAP is key for maximum publicity. (Literally, I just booked a wedding this morning because a bride-to-be found my site when she saw that I tagged a friend-of-a-friend who appeared in Morgan's photo album.) PLUS, it just makes the bride and groom and everyone in the photos really excited. Instant gratification all around.

Then, once I hit upload and tag all the people, I just sit back and watch the "likes" and comments roll in. I LOVE "likes" and comments, obviously.

Anyhoo... I just posted Morgan's FB pics from the wedding. It's a selection of 180 or so pictures, out of 10,000.

If you haven't seen them already on Facebook, well, it was an EPIC wedding.

Awesome friends, awesome food, awesome music, awesome venue. Awesome awesome awesome.

I can't even exaggerate how fun much it was. I hope my wedding will be just like it.

Morgan, for the most part, was a very chill bride. She trusted me to take good photos, so I was left to do whatever I needed to do with minimal input. I love that.



Her party-planner was a little bit flakey though...




And there was one tense moment where she had to take matters into her own hands and lay a smackdown on some inept Helper Mexicans.

This poor guy...he probably gets paid like $2 an hour and barely understands English...



But it's all totally understandable since Morgan's day-to-day job is working as mega-director GoreVerbinski's right-hand and managing hundred-million-dollar movie sets (currently The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer).

Look how prettily she cleans up!




The whole day took place at her parents gorgeous Pasadena home in various phases. It was really cool. The ceremony was held in the motor court. Cocktails were on the patio and in the garden. And then dinner and dancing took place in and around the pool which was converted into a dancefloor just for the occasion!

The ceremony was officiated by their close friend Jim.



It was SPECTACULAR.





And Jim's beautiful wife just happens to be Reese Witherspoon, currently pregnant with their first child.



I took a fantastic portrait of them. They were SUCH a sweet couple. But unfortunately CensorFrog tells me I can't publish any magazine-quality solo photos that internet lurkers might steal and spread around. Which is, of course, totally understandable as well.

So this is all you get.



I took a few really amazing photos of the Denison crew that I was really really proud of as well.




This next picture in particular I still can't believe I was able to pull off.

Group pictures are always tricky, but when you can execute it perfectly - posing and directing people so that it looks interesting and not-awkward - it feels awesome.

LOVE.



The first dance was really cute.



Morgan's boss, Gore, looked on like a proud papa.



And speeches were hilarious.



We had a nice leisurely cocktail hour. The food was Fancy Mexican and INCREDIBLE.








And then there was an epic dance party.










At one point, during "Dynamite", we all jumped so hard that the dancefloor broke, (remember it was built on top of the pool), all the lights turned off and the music shut off. But people just kept on singing and dancing until they fixed the situation 5 minutes later.










LizCroci was definitely the dancefloor MVP.






Her Elaine Dance was off-the-hook.




I just love how expressive Morgan was. She clearly had the best day of her life.



We LOVES an umbrella!




Late at night I ended up in a suite with a bunch of Denison girls and some lemonboobs.

We LOVES LEMONBOOBS.






Amazing amazing wedding.

Congratulations Morgan and Luc!