One of my favorite weddings of this season so far has to be Dana & Jonathan’s intimate destination wedding at the fabulous Cloister Sea Island, GA.  Both the bride and groom lead very busy lives as physicians and planning a large wedding was simply not what either of them wanted to do with their free time.  Instead, they chose to have a small group of their closest family and friends join them at one of Georgia’s finest resorts for a luxurious wedding weekend.  With only 20 guests total, this black tie affair was a wonderful change of pace from our typical larger scale weddings.  The guests were treated to a welcome cruise on the Cloister’s vintage yacht as well as several days of fine dining and getting to know one another over cocktails and excursions.  There were no attendants, just Dana and Jonathan in a tiny candle lit chapel expressing their absolute devotion to one another.  Not a dry eye could be found as they said “I do” and kissed for the first time as husband and wife.  After the ceremony, guests were treated to a beautiful single table dinner in the resort’s wine cellar as a classical guitarist entertained for the evening.  I absolutely love how both families bonded at this wedding.  Everyone was so blissfully happy to be a part of such a special occasion.  We could not have asked for a more incredible wedding to kick off our 2010 season and truly feel blessed to have been able to capture these memories for such a wonderful couple.  Below are some of my favorite images from their wedding day.  Also, my new favorite get away… 20 foot sparkler fountains as the car drives off.  Absolutely breathtaking.

Enjoy!

In case you missed it be sure to check out their engagement photos also at Sea Island.

Vendors:

Dress:  Solutions Bridal of Gainesville

Catering:  Cloister Sea Island

Vintage Rolls Royce:  Martin’s Vintage Rides

I loved this 1970 Rolls Royce.  It fit the venue so perfectly!

Why hello internet world.  Remember when I use to blog?  Well call me nostalgic, but I’m blogging again!!!! Sorry its been such a long blog absence, but it seems the busier we are, the further down the to do list blogging gets shoved.  I’m happy to be back up and blogging again, and am so excited about some of the sessions and weddings we have shot over the last few weeks.  One of which is this gorgeous engagement session with Jessica & James.  Can I just say its clients like these guys that melt our hearts and remind us why we love what we do.  Jessica actually found us months before she was engaged and wrote me the sweetest email ever about how much she loved our work.  She told me that the minute James popped the question she would be calling us.  She wasn’t kidding either.  While walking on the beach on Christmas Eve, James asked Jessica to be his wife.  The very next day there was an ecstatic email in my inbox from Jess who was so happy to announce she was finally engaged to the man of her dreams!  We quickly set up a time to meet and it was there that I absolutely fell in love with this couple.  They are so kind and genuine and completely in love with one another that it melted our hearts.  We knew right there that we were all a photography match made in heaven.   Jessica and James both understand how important photography is to memorialize their lives together and create art that truly expresses who they are as a couple.  When clients tell us how much they value photos and give us artistic freedom to capture them as they are, we know we are in good company.

We had an amazing time shooting these two back in early February.  Although it was bitterly cold, you never would know it from the photos.  They were so much fun to shoot, and although Jessica had been sick just days before, she seemed the picture of health during her engagement session.  Below are a few of my favorite images.  We shot these at the Treaty Oak in downtown Jacksonville and near the riverfront.  We can’t wait to see their wedding day vision come to life this summer.  We know it will be just as incredible as the couple themselves.

The icing on the cake is their beautiful engagement guest book.  I love how it turned out.

Hello lovely blog readers.  I just wanted to thank you all so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes.  I have officially been 30 for 2 whole weeks now and am happy to report I still feel like a 20-something.  I was so excited to see that I amassed 2 full hour massages from all the comments you guys left and can’t wait to force Brad into his promised slavery.  Haha.  He is actually a pretty good little massage therapist.  For those of you who don’t know I have been a Licensed Massage Therapist since 2002 and practiced until just a few years ago.  So I have trained my boy well and can’t wait to cash in soon!  A lot of people have emailed and asked how the big birthday was and if I did anything monumental to ring in this new decade of life.  I am sad to report that we did nothing monumental.  We have been super busy this month with four weddings and a ton of shoots so we didn’t have much time to do anything big but we spent my birthday with some wonderful friends as well as my family and that is what awesome birthdays are made of.  We are actually treating ourselves to a big birthday gift in the form of a vacation to Washington D.C. and New York City this April so we can’t wait to really celebrate then.  So if you’re in that area in early April, drop me an email and we will hang out!

Below are a couple pictures from our random impromptu birthday celebrations.  Every year (seriously every year) Brad randomly likes to turn a normal planned game night with friends into a birthday by adding a birthday cake and party hats.  Its corny but its cute.  Oddly enough Ryan found a new use for his butter knife in this photo.

Lisa and I like to throw math inspired gang signs.  Its how we roll.  Just a few days after this photo she popped out the most adorable baby boy ever!  I asked her to hold him in until Feb. 16th so we could be birthday buddies, but baby Cam wanted to be born on Valentine’s day instead.  You can see some pictures our friend Kara did of him just days after he was born here.

One night my sister came to visit from Gainesville and we introduced her to one of our favorite games… Settlers of Catan.  Yes we party hard folks!  Seriously though… I’m the master at this game.  You should play this with me.

Thanks again everyone for the birthday wishes and messages you all sent.  Also, thanks to our wonderful friends Kara & Jeremy, Ryan & Lisa, Christina & James for being so awesome and letting my husband sneak attack a birthday party on you at the last minute.    I’m so happy to be surrounded by such incredible friends and am excited to see what this new chapter in my life has in store for me.  Hopefully it contains zero gray hairs or wrinkles.

PS:  Stay tuned for lots of blog goodness coming soon.  Weddings, engagement sessions, kayaking photos… oh my!

Lesley & Kyle are a busy couple living and working on Florida’s west coast.  We had not actually had an opportunity to meet them until the day we shot their engagement photos.  We instantly clicked with them both, and Brad was in true form as he and Lesley bonded over their experiences as structural engineers.  For those of you who don’t know, Brad has his Professional Engineering License as a structural engineer.  Talk about left brain right brain.  Both Kyle and Lesley share a wonderful sense of humor and I just love the way Kyle looks at his bride to be as if she is the only girl in the world.  Seriously being around couples in love is one of the best benefits of my job!  When Lesley and I began talking several months back about their engagement photos she knew they wanted to do something that involved the beach.  Both she and Kyle were raised here in Jacksonville and spent much of their lives on the shore so it was important to them to capture that in some way.  We thought the perfect place would be Little Talbot Island‘s famous driftwood beaches.  We actually had not been there since we first moved to Jacksonville, so Brad and I were really excited to revisit the area with Lesley & Kyle.  We are so thrilled with how their photos turned out.  In spite of the freezing cold wind Lesley & Kyle looked so in love and happy just being in each other’s arms.  We are so excited for their wedding coming up in just a few weeks at TPC Sawgrass here in Ponte Vedra.  We know it will be beautiful and hopefully a little warmer than it was for their engagement session. I know Lesley would appreciate that.

Thanks guys for coming up and spending the day with us.  We can’t wait to see you again soon!