You’ve probably heard of ‘trash the dress’ photo shoots and thought, “I don’t really need photos of myself rolling around in the sand in my wedding dress as waves crash over me.” And, I’d have to agree that that can feel a bit trite, depending on how it’s done.  We’d just like to throw out our idea of what you can do to get the most out of this special time in your life. First of all,  there’s really no need to ‘trash’ that dress that probably cost you thousands of dollars.  It’s kind of like the rock stars that smash their uber expensive guitars  (that cost enough that feed a village for a year) because they can…not cool!  We prefer that you get the most out of your dress (and your wedding experience in general), which is why we call these editorial style shoots ‘rock the dress’ sessions. I can’t think of any other time in your life that you will invest so much money, thought and emotion into a piece of clothing (At least, I certainly hope not…unless you are going to the Oscars!).  All the focus around weddings seems to be on squeezing in to the dress, and not about what you can squeeze out of it!  It’s nice to be able to squeeze all you can out of the wonderful experience of wearing such a piece of art.

It’s also nice to spend your wedding day with your guests and not having to feel torn between getting lots of photos of the two of you and spending time with your guests. Stacie and Dennis wanted to spend as much time with their family and friends as possible, so their wedding day photography was about documenting the day as it unfolded, which involved them with their friends and family, most of the time.  They knew they would have a shoot later where they would go out, just the two of them, with no time constraints and have a photo session that was just about them…Since their wedding was in a more tropical setting, we chose Balboa Park as the location for the shoot to provide a contrast to their wedding photos and also with the thought that the classic and romantic architecture would compliment Stacie’s gorgeous dress. We had so much fun on this shoot, and these two got lots of applause and ‘congratulations’ by passer-by’s. We just pretended it was the wedding day, rather than telling them it wasn’t!  To me, the whole shoot was worth it just for the shot above! I’d also like to add that Stacie’s dress was not made much dirtier than it got on the wedding day 🙂 Congrats again to this beautiful couple! Enjoy the images…