Hatch Wedding

This wedding was awesome. Everyone, including the bride, was wearing cowboy boots the whole time. The groom and the men from the bridal party were all wearing western tuxedo shirts, and cowboy hats were everywhere. The ceremony and the reception were in Bountiful at the Wight House, and the location was beautiful.
Christina and Heber are a joy to shoot because their personalities and their just absolute cheerfulness just shine through every photo they are in.

I loved her bouquet... stargazer lilies are always just gorgeous. :)

See all of the photos of Christina and Heber's wedding here.

Hatch Reception

The reception, like the ceremony, was both fun and super relaxed. I love easy-going brides and grooms, as their family is often easy-going as well! The cake and a lot of the details at the wedding were gorgeous, and a lot of people got up and danced when the music came on. Being a dancer myself, I always feel it's more enjoyable when everyone is getting their groove on.

Before everyone else could start dancing, the Christina and Heber got to strut their stuff.

Then it was dad's turn.

Formal stuff over, now it's time to party!

This couple had some of the cutest expressions.... I mean seriously, look at that face.

You can see all of their photos, beginning to end, here.

Zmoos Wedding- Salt Lake City

One of the top reasons I liked working with Abbey and Taylor is even when things went wrong, sometimes disastrously so, they were still so pleasant and happy. They had had some fairly large hurdles to overcome with their formal session and as the day of the wedding came things seemed to continue in that same vein. Abbey and Taylor had extended family in town for the weekend, and apparently some of the nieces came bearing gifts in the form of plague. The little Typhoid Marys kindly shared a nice violent flu with everyone in the family, including the bride, a few days before the big day itself. Although Abbey was mostly feeling better by the morning of the wedding, on the way to the Salt Lake Temple she had an allergic reaction to something, and her eye swelled almost completely shut (fortunately a temporary situation!). Later, about halfway through the newlywed photos, Taylor's tux coat button popped off for the second time. Finally, someone accidentally spilled water over one of their favorite enlargements from the bridal session, right before the reception was due to begin. Despite this and the normal stress and craziness that come part and parcel in a wedding day, Abbey and Taylor were both happy, smiling, and thoroughly in love. It was extraordinary, and they were awesome!

I thought this was precious....

You got to be careful with a whole bunch of groomsman who are bigger than you. Crazy stuff happens. ;)

The entire wedding can be seen here. Go check it out!

Zmoos Reception at Sleepy Ridge

Now don't tell any of my other brides this (shhhh!), but I think that Abbey and Taylor's wedding day was the most enjoyable and satisfying day in my career as a photographer thus far. The bride and groom were both knockouts in the looks department, the families were a joy to deal with, and everyone looked fantastic. This reception was lovely. The reception hall at Sleepy Ridge is absolutely gorgeous, and Abbey and her family had obviously put a LOT of thought into the decorations. The food was wonderful, they had a live band (which I always love), and there were so many people. Abbey's family is very well established in the area, and so the place was just packed to the rafters.

DJ's can be wonderful, but as I've said before, live bands are my favorite. I met Thomas through the swing dance scene here in Utah, and we both still love to dance when we can. The fact that most live wedding bands lean towards jazz and other "danceable" music (at least as we think of it), it always makes it more fun for me. This group was great to listen to.

I love crepes, and I especially love crepes that come along with huge fireballs.

The entire wedding party looked great, but I must say, the boys had something special going on.

It was a beautiful evening, all the way around.

The wedding cake was outstanding, but I think I had a special place in my heart for the groom's cake- as a rock climber, I thought it was perfect. :)

Take at look at all the galleries from the wedding, start to finish, here.

Rehearsal Dinners

I like rehearsal dinners. They are a great chance to meet the wedding party ahead of time, so that we can be more comfortable with each other on the wedding day, there's usually really good food, and I get to hear stories about the bride and groom that usually don't come up other times. Abbey and Taylor's family are very funny people, and shared a lot of stories about the happy couple that had the whole room laughing. One in particular stuck in my mind as a good example of the type of person Abbey is. She was about 12 and was extremely excited to go to a summer camp. Now Abbey is such a gracious person and she was so sure that she would have a wonderful time that she wrote individual thank you letters to each of the counselors to express how much fun she had..... weeks before the camp even started. We got to see what kind of person Taylor is as well. I'll just say this, it takes a very secure man to get up in front of couple hundred people as sing "Realize" by Colbie Caillat to his bride to be. It was, however, very sweet.

These were just a few photos from the evening at the Sleepy Ridge Reception center in Orem- be sure and take a look at the complete galleries from Abbey and Taylor's wedding here.

Sunshine, Smiles, Sunsets, and FIREWORKS!

For the fourth of july, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity for some pretty neat backgrounds and scheduled Brooklyn and Kagan's formals for the evening. We planned to take some normal photos at a couple of different spots in Springville that we had scouted out, and then play around when it got dark to see what we could get with the fireworks. A half an hour before the shoot Thomas and I decided to go get some smaller fireworks of our own to play around with between sunset and the fireworks show. I am so glad that we did! We got a great variety of photos, but some of the "small firework" photos are my favorites.
In light of the upcoming state holiday this saturday, I figured I would get these firework photos up now and share them with you all... :) (For all my out-of-state readers, the 24th of July is "Pioneer Day", which essentially comes out to a second fourth where people barbeque, set off more fireworks, and have lots of parades. As for me, I think any excuse to blow things up and see pretty colors is perfectly fine.)

We really lucked out- before the sunset we got some wonderful daylight photos. Not too harsh, some nice backlighting, and enough direct light to manipulate to my heart's content.

Something about this one just makes me smile...

Now you're probably thinking as you look at these next photos "Oh wow, Whitney must have enhanced the colors on that sunset- no way that is real." However, if you were to think that, you would be WRONG. wrongwrongwrong. I can say with absolute honesty that this sunset was just as incredible as it looks. If fact, I think I actually decreased the saturation of the colors a smidge. It was unbelievable.

And now that the sunset is over, we get to play.... :D

Brooklyn is a big fan of Harry Potter- I think it shows...

This shoot was so much fun, and there are a lot of other photos I would love to share- so be sure and check out the full gallery here.

Bean Wedding

Natalie and David got married in the Bountiful LDS temple, and had a reception in a local chapel. This couple (and family) was so laid back- it was a breeze to shoot them. I love when it feels like I am just hanging out with my clients, documenting them having fun on their own, without it needing to feel overly posed or forced.
Waiting for the bride and groom to make their exit from the temple...

The happy couple!

I loved the light that day- it was a gorgeous summer afternoon.

Sunshine and tulips make for a good wedding day....

The prep...

The mad scramble...

And the Victor...

During the dancing this old ska song came on, and the bridal party got down with their bad selves...

Check out the entire wedding, start to finish here.

The next level

Every now and then I have a shoot that I feel is a turning point in my photography. They are shoots that I look back on and in every session afterwards I see a marked difference- a boost in creativity and quality. I feel that this is a shoot that will meet those criteria. I loved doing Erin and Todd's engagement photos at Wheeler Farm. They were a terrifically fun couple, great to both pose and simply react candidly, and they were both quite stylish. I especially liked Erin's style, and felt we got some really good photos for their announcement and their reception sign-in book. So when it came time to do Erin's bridal pictures, I was definitely looking forward to it- she's a gorgeous, stylish person who is fun to work with and I was confident that we would end up with photos to equal the engagement session. This shoot went beyond my expectations, so much so that I ended up with twice as many photos to give Erin as I normally do! Her dress, hair, and makeup were perfect, she brought lots of different shoes (at my encouragement- at the engagement shoot she had expressed a love of shoes), and she was happy and ready to go right from the start. We stuck around the City County Building in Salt Lake City, as well as around the Salt Lake Library.

Like I said, I have a pretty good feeling that this shoot will be one that will mark the beginning of even better things to come. Things just flowed.....

Erin brought this chaise lounge which fit the feel of the setting perfectly.

I was so pleased with this next one that I edited it before I had even processed any of the others and ordered a large metal print. It's now hanging in the entryway to my office.

Sometimes I try to control the spill from a flash; sometimes, though, it's just what you need.

I generally went with a very clean look for the processing for these photos, but there were a few where I had a bit of fun. This is one.

Click here to see the full, 176-photo gallery.

Some overlooked favorites

After looking at the post of Abbey and Taylor's formals shoot, I realized that some of my favorite photos of Abbey didn't make it into the post. Here's a few that I really wanted to share. This first one is probably one of my favorite all-time photos....