If such a thing as the quintessential Washington, DC wedding exists, it would be Cortney and Andrew’s.  Who, by the way, couldn’t be two nicer people if they tried!

We met the couple downtown at Hotel Monaco where they were getting ready and would meet.  Then it was off for a quick stop for pictures by some well know local attractions…

…before arriving at the amazing Andrew Mellon Auditorium across from the National Portrait Gallery, where both the ceremony and reception would take place.  The auditorium was transformed into a magical, cathedral-esque ceremony space.

After the ceremony, guests enjoyed cocktails in the Green Room while the ceremony site was flipped for the reception.  Table assignments hung from ribbons on trees.

Lois of The Party Portfolio did an amazing job planning the event and managing all the things that need to happen to transform spaces.  For the reception, the auditorium was nothing short of breathe taking and included lounge seating and a 4 sided bar.  Each table was a wonderland of gold trimmed china and crystal against deep purple linens.  As if that wasn’t enough to love, there was a gelato stand and a photo booth as well… which turned into fun picture taking for us too!

There’s really only one word for the night: amazing.  Cortney and Andrew, congratulations to you both and thank you so much for choosing us to be a part of it!   Here’s a slideshow of our favorites and if you would like to be notified by email when the gallery is available for viewing, click here.

Posted by Mel @ 5:47 pm, in Weddings | No comments | Permalink

Warning:  This post rates HIGH on the sweetness scale.  So if you can’t stand gorgeous, happy, very-much-in-love couples then move along now… this post is not for you.  Hannah’s smile is so infectious.  And anybody who can jump that high as Scott did in a tux is tops in our book.  Honestly, we haven’t had so much fun shooting a wedding in a really long time!

Hannah and Scott’s wedding brought us all the way down to Greensboro, North Carolina on a glorious fall day.  Scott is a local photojournalist so we felt especially honored to be chosen, its a really big deal to us when fellow shutterbugs get married and ask us to pull the trigger.  The ceremony took place at First Presbyterian on Elm Street, a gorgeous, cathedral style church that is Hannah’s home parish.  Then it was on to the Grandover Resort for the reception, where trees were a bit of a theme.  The cake was a big hit with guests, who loved searching for the couple’s initials carved at the base of the tree trunk.

I’ve written and then rewritten this post about seven different times now, you would think I would learn.  Sometimes the photos say more than I can and these are so genuine that they make anything I write about them sound hollow.  Which is not what I am going for since this is a couple that we hope to hear from when they are coming through town. (At the risk of sounding desperate, pretty please do!!!)

So, without further ado, congrats to you both, H&S, and thank you for your trust and your hospitality.  We felt so welcome and so happy for you both.  Here’s a slideshow of our favorite favorites (there were too many favorites so we had to have favorite favorites) and click here if you would like to be notified when the gallery with all their photos is ready for viewing.  I shall say no more, I’m zipping it, mummmm…..

Posted by Mel @ 8:26 pm, in Weddings | 1 comment | Permalink

We’re not far from the big day (October 29th) but it was still worth doing, despite nearly countless reschedules due to rain.  We met up with Eileen and Stephen at the aptly named “Confusion Corner” in Williamsburg, Virginia and walked first around the campus of William and Mary before hitting colonial Williamsburg itself.

The Crim Dell is a must hit spot, at least for graduates such as Eileen, who, according to campus lore, will marry the person they walk across the bridge alongside.

We definitely made use of the characteristic cobblestone…

And grand old trees…

…before hitting the Williamsburg winery just as the sun was setting.  We love how sometimes dusk has that soft, antiqued quality of light.

We looking forward to coming back to Williamsburg at the end of the month to document these two as they tie the knot!

Posted by Mel @ 4:13 pm, in Engagement Portraits, Weddings | No comments | Permalink

It has come to my attention that I have been neglecting the album portion of this blog in a big way.  I think it was my New Years resolution for 2011 to post albums more frequently.  Sadly, the albums I am posting today went out for holiday delivery back in ‘10 so they pretty much date back to said resolution.  But these are nice albums and its never too late to make a change for the better so let’s talk contrasting pagemounts, shall we?

In both our Queensberry matted and duo books, photos are mounted to an art paper called a page (hence the name pagemount) and the apertures of the matt are cut just a tiny bit bigger so that the page peeks through.  When you choose a page color that contrasts the matt color, you get a border effect that makes your pics go POP!

Its a more contemporary look that isn’t for everyone, but given that we don’t keep an example of contrasting pagemounts in our studio, I think its a good idea to profile it here.

Here’s the design for Laura and Tom’s album (I recommend checking the designs out first, that way the shots of the books themselves make more sense).  Laura and Tom’s wedding may have looked traditional at a glance: the guys wore tuxes and Laura wore a tiara, the ceremony took place at a Catholic church and the reception at a Country Club.  But look a little closer and you’ll see just how lively this couple is from their first dance to M.C. Hammer’s Can’t Touch This to family dance offs where cousins got served by Tom’s kid brother!  This story called for an album layout with a little less tradition.

The couple chose a duo book, which combines both matted and digital (or flush mount) pages.  The choice of ivory matting with black pages really brought the matted pages to life.

Or, if you ivory mats aren’t your thing, you can do black matting with an ivory page too.  Black matting to me always says old school: it reminds me of the photo albums I found in my grandparents basement that I assume my grandmother made, painstakingly attaching each photo to the black paper with a photo corner.  But add a white page and whoosh, we’re shuttled from 1955 to the here and now…  Here’s Becky and Mike’s album design, Check out a few pages of their duo album, which included a gatefold and flip page for some extra glitz.

Also worth noting is the half photo front cover that Becky and Mike choose for their book.   This means that a photo is printed over the right half of the front cover.   I’ve been meaning to get a sample of one of these in studio because the effect is actually quite nice in black and white, the photo is slightly metallic and blends into the genuine black leather that makes up the rest of the cover quite nicely.

Similarly, Christina and William opted for a duo book with black mats and white pages.  Their cover is blind embossed though, so classic!

Also, they chose a 10×14 vertical format rather than the 12×12, which is probably our most popular choice.  Large format albums can be 12×12, 14×10 horizontal or 10×14 vertical.

Hopefully this helps some of you looking for album ideas.  More to come next week…

Posted by Mel @ 4:17 pm, in Albums, Weddings | No comments | Permalink