I hate to get cliche writing a blog post, especially about a wedding. BUT, when Jen and I shot Tracy & Jason’s engagement session a couple months ago, we knew we’d love these two. Really love them. And of course we did. But we had no idea just how much. Their wedding day went by in a blink, and everywhere was their incredible family and closest friends. I’ve never laughed so hard, and held back tears so much during a wedding in my life. The speeches took your breath away. They were beautiful, hilarious, and genuinely from the heart. Every single one of them. Jen and I adore these two so much, and every single one of their family members and friends did as well, and there was just no hiding it. There’s so much love for you both here.

Annnddddd a special shout-out to our Westjetter friend we recognized at Tracy & Jason’s reception, but can’t for the life of us remember your name. Perhaps we’ll bump into you at 41,000ft tomorrow morning when we’re off to Yellowknife, once again.

title=’Tracy & Jason\’s Vancouver Wedding at the SFU Alumni Club – 21′ />

After the, literally, record breaking heat up in Smithers over the weekend of Kylee & Eric’s wedding, Jen proposed I tax mid-summer weddings an extra 5% to make up for the extreme discomfort that anything over about 21 degrees celsius causes me. As much as I love her, and all of her brilliance, I had a better idea; focus on how amazing it’s going to be to shoot weddings where the weather isn’t anything like that and leave out the extra 5%.

That was until Mandy and I were spending the week leading up to Kristy and Shawn’s (I’m bound to spell Shawn’s name Sean just once in this post somewhere) wedding sending screenshots of weather forecasts from one another’s iPhones, and all I responded with, everyday, was the distraught little Emoji face that has it’s eyes closed in, eyebrows ‘furrowed’, and ‘lips’ trembling. The forecast was ranging, day to day, anywhere from 15-20mm of rain, to 35-45 of rain, at times heavy. And then Friday night came, and we had our traditionally Vancouver ‘Rainfall warning for greater Vancouver’ advertised by the Weather Network. 150mm of rain over the weekend. 5mm an hour. Impressive right?

But then something happened that no one understands. It didn’t rain up at Coquitlam’s Westwood Plateau. So I think we just assumed that somoeone in the area pulled something of China during the open ceremonies for the 2008 summer olympics with the whole shooting chemicals up into the clouds or whatever that was about. But hey, we’ll take it, and the incredible Autumn colours on top of a mountain.

It’s not that I search for things to fuss and worry and complain about, it really isn’t, it’s just that I HATE summer. No, it’s not that I HATE summer, it’s that I’m more comfortable when the temperature is 60 degrees cooler. Sixty. That wasn’t a typo. There’s this thing I do before weddings, everyday, over the course of a couple weeks. Check the weather. Which makes sense, because there’s only one profession where you can do your job entirely wrong every day and still be employed at the end of the week. Isn’t there, weather forecasters? Credit to them this time around, they were right. Every day over two weeks, Smithers was forecast to have the hottest day in two years the Saturday I was shooting a wedding from dusk until dawn. 33 degrees during the open sun ceremony in the middle of the day. Who planned this again?! (Love you, Eric & Kylee!)

I’ll never forget driving the highway outside of Smithers at 6:30 in the morning as the sun was rising. Pastel pinks, oranges and yellows low on the horizon to the right. Deep orange sunlight kissing the glacier to the left. And then the highway would dip, and we’d be in a cover of light fog with the river running 100 feet to our right. If you’ve never been, go. And if you aren’t in a rush to get to the Bear Claw Lodge for a wedding, stop and photograph every second of it.

How does a gorgeous young couple way up in Smithers, British Columbia, find a wedding photographer living in a city of millions, who has been dreaming of shooting up in the middle of no where, British Columbia? That’s a good question. But when you work for one of two airlines that fly into Smithers from Vancouver, it’s probably something along the lines of ‘just meant to be’. I wanted to give Eric & Kylee an engagement shoot, so I flew up a little early with Jen, and we spent the afternoon together, with these beautiful two and many of their loved ones on the edge of Hazelton and beautiful lush forests and waterfalls.

More soon, friends.

For those who have done it, you know it’s impossible to sum up a wedding weekend like this with words or images on just a blog, so I’m not going to try very hard to. But I will say that for a couple of photographers with not exactly a bucket load of experience between us in such an extraordinarily cultured wedding like this, there weren’t two better people and their families on this planet to start off for. Here’s just a few of my personal favourites.

These two have been such a long time coming for my blog. Although you could probably say that about almost everything I’ll be blogging over the next couple weeks since, you know, I decided to re-design everything in the middle of weddings season.

Tracy and Jason became some of my favourite clients from the second I read their first email to me. They’re getting married in November. NOVEMBER. When temperatures aren’t setting two year highs. Fog. Amazing colours in nature. Crisp air. Low sunlight. It’s the best, next to Winter. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, there’s this amazing thing about Vancouver. Ocean sunsets. Paige has said it from day one, and there’s a running joke, which isn’t really a joke, that she’s queen of the YVR sunrise, and I hold down the fort for sunset. But whether I’m at the airport for sunset or not, you probably shouldn’t be surprised we ended up with these…

Whose brilliant idea was it to tear down their website, and start completely from the ground up right smack dab in the middle of the busiest shooting and blogging time of the year? OBVIOUSLY not mine. All joking aside now, Cory & Patrick joked, or maybe not, I’m still unsure, that I may as well just follow them around and document their every day life from here on out – we were seeing so much of one another.

Jen and I grabbed a ferry with them over to Cory’s mum’s place on the island where they’re getting married in less than a year now. I  say THEY’RE because there seemed to be some confusion on the old Instagram that it was somehow going to be my own wedding. So, after allegedly (Hi, Brad!) Instagramming in a cryptic manner how absolutely stunning their property is, we settled in for some fresh crab, an amazing steak dinner, and some really, really nice company. And we eventually took a few photos as well…

Enjoy these, and the new EVERYTHING around here!

By the way, Cory and Patrick – full-time lifestyle photographer or not? Tell me maybe?

when cory first emailed me, she told me that photography, wedding photography, her wedding photography, was really important to her. maybe the most important thing to her. which is good, because it’s really, really, important to me too. maybe the most important thing to me. so it seemed like her and patrick we’re about as good a match to me as they come.

the story of cory and patrick, on the other hand, maybe not so much. they met in a bar, sort of. i’ve been to a total of two bars in my life, one time each. the first, earlier this year on the way home from the driving range with mum because we scored a sweet groupon for dinner. the second time? with cory and pat, for some of their engagement photos. what did i have to drink? a coca-cola. i know, pretty outta control right? i’m not going to go into the significance of the blarney stone to cory and patrick, because i shouldn’t can’t be bothered.

then there’s the story of the weather; cory woke up with butterflies early on the morning of our shoot. just an engagement shoot. but like she said, photography means a lot to her. i woke up with pure exhilaration the morning of our shoot. it was raining. and rain means i get a cool(er) apartment, not that photography isn’t really important me. and after a week of clear blue skies with beautiful, but plain sunsets, in true vancouver fashion, the sky cracked open in the evening for one of the best sunsets i’ve seen this year. i love the energy of this stunning couple – enjoy the images, friends!

you know, this time last year, everyone in the city of vancouver had one thing on their list of things to do. get home by 5pm, and glue themselves to hockey night in canada on cbc. and here we were one year, and just a week into the nhl stanley cup playoffs, our vancouver canucks were already down 3-0 in a best of seven series. we had the best #reversesweep planned in the history of the universe, and then we lost game five and everything was over.

fortunately, what the canucks going out in the first five games of the first round meant was, about the fifty percent of the evenings that had been booked by the vancouver canucks, had just opened up to great clients for photography sessions. like this one, with kathleen and lucky, out at ubc’s nitobe garden helping out my favourite photographer, mandy jill.

HEY! who wants to meet the two most wonderful people who are going to be my first couple to be married around midnight underneath the northern lights in the canadian wilderness outside of yellowknife?! RIGHT GUYS?! after all the bragging i did about samantha’s uninsured adventures last post, i figured it was about time we formally introduced you to the fantastic two behind all this madness. hey, speaking of the most fantastic, breathtaking, thrilling, bone-chilling, amazing, and awe-inspiringness (hi honey! i know you’re not jealous or anything…), what would be better than getting to do a late afternoon, casual engagement shoot at some ICE CAVES hidden just outside of yellowknife. oh wait, i know what would be better – a winter, or fall, preferably winter though, wedding underneath the aurora borealis on a frozen lake. thanks samantha, thanks alex – love you guys!

just chillin’ on the ice road over great slave lake. what do YOU do on a saturday afternoon?

i know you probably aren’t going to be able to handle this, but how about a wedding thrown up here in the beginning of winter instead of a negative fifteen degree night up around the arctic circle under dancing green skies. ohh, i’m just keeping well balanced is all, and every once in a while i like to re-affirm my love for weddings as well. and i wish i could shoot every wedding in november, in the middle of the countryside, on the most amazing autumn day. or do we call it the suburbs here? countryside or suburbs? you decide, i think i’ll take the countryside though. regardless, with beautiful sun light all day, magic hour seemingly endless, and that defined winter sunset, i’ll trade six months of summer for six more months of winter any day. i’ve always said that should i ever get married, it’ll be in the dead of winter (come on, you know me), but i think i could settle for a november wedding like this indeed. beauty.

and for everything tara and chad, and general awesomeness – go stalk mandy’s facebook page!

jennifer and chris’ wedding was thee one. i’d been looking forward to it since about april the 3rd. …that was my last trip up to yellowknife before wedding season, and i knew once i got to their wedding, the next weekend would be aurora season back up north and summer would be on the way out. YEAH, i’m a winter person, and i’m OBSESSED with the northern lights! read my bio page?! maybe you should!

seriously now – well that was serious too, but this is more serious here… i actually was really, really excited for chris & jen’s wedding. i met with them over the summer at chris’ grandparents place where they got married, and i think when you walk down a tree tunnel driveway for a good two minutes to get to the 1900s house – it feels a little like one of those stylized shoots? go ahead and throw in the home made wedding cake, gazzilions of handmade crafts and details, bouquets of their own creation, and then a small collection of awesome folks closest to them – it’s pretty much the greatest thing ever. plus, mandy and i were home for dinner, which, for a wedding saturday, has to be some kind of miracle. chris and jen, if you get into wedding planning – we need to stay in touch for probably the next ten to fifteen years (when i get married), so you can put everything together for me.

can’t wait to show you what’s up next friends! you’re going to die it’s so good!

weekends together with megan and mike are automatically ones for the books, and the vault. when jen and i flew over to campbell river for a couple nights last weekend, her biggest concern was being able to fit in. (sorry, j – it’s a good story for the blog) and all i told her was – ‘anything you think is inappropriate, offensive, or entirely unprofessional, is completely acceptable and expected conversation.’ see, megan and i have a… special relationship. she has an electric, vibrant, hilarious personality you just LOVE to be around, and megan and mike together are pretty much the equivalent of infinite hilarity! when we all get together, there’s never anything less than fun, laughter, love and outrageous conversation.

it was such a treat to guests at your wedding, guys, and still be able to photograph what you two share. jen and i are absolutely delighted we could share this with you, so enjoy these images from the both of us ;) much love, friends!

jen’s shots!

megan and mike, i hope vegas was outstanding, i hope you had a blast, and i hope you’re home millionaires! if you two (us three) are now millionaires, i’m sorry for the lack of blog posts, everyone, but i’ll have moved to antarctica effective immediately ;)

usually, when i travel for an hour and a bit in a confined space on saturdays, i’m on westjet 108 to yellowknife, but a week or two ago, i made an exception, and thankfully, mandy was there on the other end of the metro to grab me so we could head up toward simon fraser university for dawn & spencer’s wedding day. it was a beauty, and my first time out in port moody i think. i’m not really sure. i don’t travel that far east usually ;)

anyway! here are my favourites – lots from the reception, which is rare for me, but it was a blast! all the best, guys!

It’s really nice when you walk through life with a little bit of positive momentum. Or a lot of it. Being back at the Westin to share their early afternoon getting ready together was pretty awesome after what I got to share there a little while earlier. See our post below ;)  Plus, Sarah & Volker’s wedding reminded me so much of the European wedding rampage I was on in Finland last summer, and it stands to make sense… Volker being from Germany and all. I know, I’m a clever one, folks. Stay with me for a second here if you can.

I think it’s the coolest thing when not everything has to be translated through words, because so much more than any of that were those teary eyed smiles, minutes of howling laughter, and so much sincere appreciation offered in hugs and handshakes. It was a blast to take in and create from. I mean, how easy is it to be inspired with a Seattle based couple that loves & appreciates the diversity of Vancouver as much as all of us living here. Although, you’re not too shabby yourself, Seattle. I do love you, AND I’ll see you in a few weeks when I fly out of SEATAC heading across the pond. Stay tuned for that ;)

Sarah & Volker, you two are magnificent. Loved your wedding, loved being such an intimate part of it with Carolyn and the next time I order something from Amazon.com, I expect a hand written thank you letter from you, Volker ;) All the best guys!

P.S. Sorry to the guests I sat next to at dinner who pretended very well that I was normal while my eyes watered continuously during casual conversation. I get sick about once every three years, and it just so happened to be that weekend ;) I’m such a charmer. Ha!

A couple weekends ago, I got together with Carolyn for another wedding. Again, I spent the morning with the gents and their fine story telling abilities at the BEAUTIFUL Sutton Place Hotel in downtown Vancouver. It wasn’t long before the weather passed and we were down at Jericho beach in the most amazing light kicking up sand and bustin’ out dance moves. Awesome day!

Don’t wander too far between posts, I’ve got something special I promise you haven’t seen before coming up later in the week ;)

Haha! If you only KNEW the trouble these unfolded pocket squares were causing. I’m never wearing one.

So, how do you turn a 3.5/4 hour wedding into a 12+ hour day? Travel to Swartz Bay/Victoria from Vancouver with public transit and BC Ferries. Kim Spears and I FINALLY had the chance to meet up, and shoot a wedding together! It was a blast! We joked about everything, laughed about everything! She told me some remarkable travel stories, some more flattering than others – not quite like the one about her vomiting in SE Asia on a plane, on take off, and having it come back and land all over her, and laughing hysterically as it happened. Yeeeeup. Head to her blog and check out her travel snaps Tuesdays!

Anyway, after squeezing in my lunch that sparks creativity, McDonalds, we rendezvoused with Jamie & Colene for their backyard ceremony, and bridals to follow. Kim had actually, and I don’t know how she did it, but sometimes it makes me wish I could charm like her, Kim had asked someone randomly living in the countryside if we could shoot at their GORGEOUS home/yard/farm on Jamie & Colene’s wedding day. Win. Win. Win.

Kim, you are fabulous. So much fun, and so extraordinarily talented with sparks of creativity like nothing else!

How about his smile in the side mirror? Pretty proud of myself there, folks ;)

Every little bit of praise for this ring shot goes directly to Kim. Her lemons. Her brilliance. And a little to me for draggin’ the chair along ;)

Sometimes I just love to talk about how photogenic a couple is together, I mean actually dwell on it because I find it fascinatingly perfect. Enter Chris & Joanne, two who are exactly that. Chris & I have been trying to organise this for some time now, but it’s proved to be challenging with our schedules because if he isn’t off flying our aircraft, I’m busy sending them out or maintenance is working on them in the hangar. I met with Joanne at YVR, and we waited for Chris to finish his pairing and then beat the very aircraft he was flying over to the company hangar on the other side of the airport where we went to work in front of the camera.

Photographers, I know you know those shoots where it is entirely effortless knocking out image after image because your clients are so comfortable, and at such ease with one another it feels like you can shoot all night… This ranks extraordinary high there for me. And we probably could have done, but the boys at maintenance needed the aircraft and the mosquitos were RELENTLESS. I’ve never experienced them like that before. I have 8 bites on my neck alone. Insanity.

And for maybe the first time in my life, someone else put more effort into their hair than what I usually do. Or maybe it just seemed that way with Joanne helping you fix those headset flat spots, Chris ;) Enjoy you two, and all the absolute best on the 14th for your wedding day!

I love so much that each one of us has our quirks, and every one of us is the most unique expression of who we are and who we have become as a fantastic consequence of life. Every single one of us on this insanely beautiful planet. I especially love the way we come together as couples, and the absolute oneness and purity to the word unique in all of that. Megan & Mike are romantic, they’re… how can I say this politely, guys? …completely & entirely embracing of who they are individually, and what they have and still are creating together. And it inspires me. I mean it, guys – you’re probably reading this and laughing because we had the most open, fun, ridiculous, outrageous and random 24 hours together for the first time we’d ever met, but I mean it. Seriously.

So I’d spoken to Megan a few times on the phone, but it was focused more toward missing bags and full aircraft hold areas. We may have even e-mailed a few times just prior to deciding we’d have a ‘client meeting’ to discuss their wedding on the island next summer. Well, that was B.S. What client meeting? We don’t even know what that means. Ha, let’s be honest here right. So I dumped one of my shifts at work, and then got on a half hour flight from Vancouver to Campbell River on Vancouver Island where I was greeted by Megan & Mike, and my boss Barrie. (Hi Barrie! Thanks for letting us do the shoot on the ramp – it was AWESOME and we appreciate it!)

Honestly, I could write a million words about these two, and how much fun we all had. How great it was arriving as… well, not even really strangers, but as meeting for the first time, and leaving with an awesome new friend… erm… client. Megan, I’m not even going to open up the BFF can of worms. I know Jen will see this, and I don’t wanna get in trouble.
(P.S. Mike – you SUCK at Wii bowling, and the next time I crash on your couch – there is NO WAY things will go as poorly for me. Book it. Ha!)

Last Saturday I was with Carolyn shooting Andy & Bailey’s gorgeous wedding. I spent the morning out in Ladner with Andy, who I think looks exactly like our beloved Canuck, Alex Burrows (see Carolyn’s wonderful engagement session of them for proof) and had a great time capturing so many beautiful details & fun moments with he & his groomsmen. Pathetically sad fact: I had only my second ever limo ride with them. My first was a year earlier in Finland during another wedding. Thank goodness I know people right ;)

I’m sure you’ve seen this game before at weddings, and I LOVE it. I was practically in tears laughing so hard with them. Thank goodness my camera does most of the work ;)

The last couple weekends I’ve gotten together with Carolyn, who is not only incredibly talented, energetic and fun person, but also an extraordinarily lazy blogger. Just kidding Carolyn, I know you’ve been working like mad and keeping your beautiful family happy. Our first wedding together was Brandon & Terra’s, another smokin’ hot day in Vancouver that assured one thing for me. I am not getting married in the summer. It’s too hot. It’s just too hot, I melted half way through the day which is why this post is a little shorter.

I’M SORRY! I know thirty-six photos is a little excessive for a single blog post but I can’t help myself, and photographers, I KNOW you’ve had those weddings too so hush, hush! Pretty easy to say this was one of my favourite weddings. Ever. Pretty easy to say I speak that after every wedding, but all for different reasons. I remember myself gushing over many of the moments these two shared through their day, particularly all the laughs at the reception.

Sylvia & Parag‘s life together is already something extraordinary, and without question, the better it gets, the better it gets. Something that hits home the most to me is the way they just know with one another, and equally, the way they’ve travelled the most exotic, and most ordinary places together and allowed their relationship together to just flourish completely in all of it. Love these two!

I could write a million and one things to fill this space about Sylvia & Parag, but I know not all of you have the attention span for a long winded love story like I do ;) Sylvia & I have been e-mailing for a good few weeks, and every bloody time she writes to me she (subconsciously?) mentions how she’s in a different country than where she last wrote from.

It’s at this point during this blog post that I would like to mention how there is nothing more annoying than to see someone living the life you want to live when you’re not living it. I’m only kidding you a little bit, Sylvia.

And so, let’s kick off 2010 with just a little romance – because I get the feeling this is the year for it in my life. Sylvia & Parag met over in Geneva, Switzerland and in the following months and years ensued many weekend breaks of sunrises in the mountains of Europe, weekend breaks to just about every European city I only dream of sharing with my soulmate, and really… every other activity you could imagine in… every other country around the world you could imagine. It sounds as though the only thing left for them may be the Trans-Mongolian-Express railway, and if you talk to Parag about it – 10 days on a train across barren Mongolia, Russia – and just perhaps mainland Europe seems like it’s a bit of stretch for now. Which is a fabulous thing, because if you two manage that journey before I do – I’m going to be extremely upset for years to come.

Sylvia & Parag, there is nothing more perfect than what you two share together, and the absolute fairytale that you two have lived in your life with one another thus far could be the most surreal love story I’ve known to date. I had a blast hanging out with you, and very nearly wetting myself laughing so hard inside Granville Island Market Place within the first five minutes we met!

I was so looking forward to teaching Sylvia the robot, but alas, I forgot my tripod & remote trigger – and we had to have photos so… Parag did the honours, and did them awfully well I might add!

Married with every last ounce of energy & excitement that exclamation mark brings! When Anna & I met Jaana & Pekka for their engagement session on Suomenlinna, and had a wonderful evening together chatting, laughing, joking… I knew when I said at the end of the night that I was sorry I wouldn’t be around for their wedding in October that I was lying. I wasn’t sure how on Earth I’d get back to Finland for a wedding four hours North of Helsinki, but I knew it was going to happen. And about two weeks before their day, I’d found a flight.

As I was putting together this blog post, clicking between photos, inserting them into the post, it felt as though I could’ve wrote a story for each one of them because all through their day, they were always making sure everyone else was well and it just seemed like the most perfect unfolding. Like that hour break we had after the formals when she had an entire lunch delivered to my hotel room, despite stuffing our faces silly at breakfast not much earlier. Jaana & Pekka are just the perfect pair together, and their entire world of families, friends, and strangers they rendezvous with all know it.

Married on the 3rd! Cute!

While Anna was over with the girls, I got to hang out with Pekka and shoot a few getting ready images of he & his best man which I really enjoyed! Nice change of pace, and another first for me!

Guys, I love you for this. It was SO cold, and you two were awesome about it!

Sometimes it’s fun to just be together with that special someone in your life, it’s nice to just be. I thought about getting lazy and just titling this somewhat like many of my other couple shoots… ‘iida & ville | engagement that isn’t really an engagement and ville probably doesn’t want the pressure of thinking about engagement even though iida can dream it up in her mind’, but I had a hard time finding an image that would accompany all that – so, I told it very simply like it is. Just them, in their beingness together, completely.

On a side note, this about tipped my Finnglish to the absolute maximum – but thank goodness for Anna‘s translation skills! Yaahoooo!

Anja & Heikki are a lovely young couple, and I could write as many pleasant things about them as I could about their friend’s Volkswagen which I now want more than my Macbook Pro. Maybe. We had a great time photographing their ceremony here in Helsinki and quick bridals just outside the church after. Congratulations you two!

She’s Slovenian. He’s Finnish. She moved to Finland for studies. They found one another, they fell in love. A couple moves South from the North, and they’re living happily ever after as we all dream.

Nina & Jyri are adorable, just… unbelievably cute together that it makes my stomach weak. After one of the photographs, I just had to say out loud “You two are so cute together that it’s almost disgusting!” Nina replies – “I hope that’s not a bad thing!” …It can never be a bad thing. I enjoyed this session more than words can say!

On Wednesday, I left sunny, warm Vancouver for Helsinki. I arrived in much better time this go – less than 17 hours as opposed to the 48 hours it took the last time between Helsinki & Vancouver, so already – we’re off to a much better start! The single biggest problem was however, and still is in fact, that I left Vancouver and it was a delicious 25°C, and clearly it slipped my mind I was heading to Scandinavia as I packed. Arrive Helsinki – it’s a cool 14°C, which isn’t half bad. So Anna meets me at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport just past 6pm where we grab a bus back to her place, literally throw my backpack on her living room floor, change, and go right back out the door to the train station where we caught a train North to Tampere for a bridal shoot at 09:00 the next morning! We arrived in Tampere, and it was like 5°C – no jacket, no gloves. Got up the next morning for the shoot and the clock in Tampere reads 6.6°C… Nice. Thanks. So essentially, I flew half way around the world – completely changed seasons, and had a bridal shoot 15 hours after touching down in Finland with no appropriate clothing. Oh yeah, and it’s supposed to snow Thursday. Wooooo!

So let’s get onto Riikka & Henri! Whenever Anna e-mails me about upcoming shoots, I can never keep track of everything she has planned but when she told me Riikka & Henri had plans for a bundle of balloons – it locked into my memory like candy to my shopping cart! Tampere feels like much more of an industrial city than anywhere else I’ve been in Finland, but it seriously has a great vibe & some extremely photogenic locations! Enjoy!

When Jamie e-mailed me a few nights before I was to leave for my cruise up to Alaska and asked if I was interested in shooting Michelle & Mitch’s wedding with her – it was like asking a kid, or me, if I wanted to go on a shopping spree in a candy store! The only problem was I’d have to, once again, get up at some ungodly hour of 6am to be off the ship & ready to go by 7:30am instead of enjoying a nice relaxed breakfast without butterflies in my stomach at 10:30am. All that being said, we have a wonderful day of unfolding and it was the fastest 13 hours I’ve ever spent ‘working’, that is for sure!

First look! So cute!

Shoes!

Fabulous details!

If you remotely enjoyed these, take a quick peek over to Jamie’s set here, which are absolutely stellar! And just because she wanted me to let all of you know that her career in the making is actually to re-create Christian rap…

They may be the cutest couple in the world, and she just happens to be my mother. I don’t ever remember seeing my mum more happy, more content, and more expansive than at the place she is now in her life. As for George, well, he’s just the most gentle man I may have ever known, and it feels like such a blessing to have him in our home as part of our family. Although let’s be honest, I do miss it when I had the place to myself on the weekends because mum was over at his place from Friday after work until Monday morning.

It’s hard to really… describe how their wedding day went because it just… happened so fast, and everything came together in perfect time and the most perfect way. Every single detail these two drew up and put together was beyond worthwhile, and it felt like the most romantic, personal, and charming wedding to date. Thank you mum, thank you George, and thank you all of our family for flying in and taking time out of your busy lives to share this with us all. It was so special.

And just to throw it out there, I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous about a blog post. Or nervous period. Well, except for yesterday morning at breakfast on the cruise ship. Mum, George, Sue & Scott – you hear me.

Mum & son photo! Cute!

Never in my life have I felt more single, but in the complete vibe of love than when I spent the day with Mark & Lori up in the interior of British Columbia. Just being around them, you can feel it, you can feel how in love they are, and there isn’t the slightest doubt about it. Their wedding was gorgeous, and Mark decided last minute to keep the ceremony outside in a light drizzle and so naturally, it was the most beautiful ceremony I have witnessed. It was a wonderful weekend too, I felt right up at home in the cabin and really was treated just as part of the family – so a huge thank you to Mark, Lori & the Werklunds for such a great time!

I was sitting editing Saturdays wedding at about 3:30 this afternoon when it hit me – “Bollocks, we have an engagement shoot in like two hours don’t we?!” I frolicked into the shower, made a stop at McDonalds for dinner & met Jaana & Pekka on Suomenlinna for their sesh!

I’m not entirely sure what it was, but once again, I was pretty much blown away with the connection we established together from the moment we met. Jaana & Pekka are just those down to Earth, genuinely pleasant & warmly loving type of people that can make you glow within moments! The light on Suomenlinna was stunning all evening long & our couple so adoring that it wasn’t possible to go wrong! I wish I was here to shoot their wedding in early October, but I know it’ll be incredible regardless! Enjoy, guys & kiitos!

When we met with Anna & Pete a few weeks ago down in Tampere, I think Anna & I both knew we were in for a bit of a treat with these two.  They had so many adorable little touches/surprises/charms worked out for their wedding day and it all turned out quite perfect.  Except for the getting to the church part where we very nearly missed & took the wrong exit twice, and Anna’s blood curdling scream both times had my heart jump a little more than I would’ve liked but we all made it, alive and well.

My time on the road here has just about expired before I head back home for… not very long anyway, so what lies ahead are a couple weddings – one very special one to our family on 3 September, some more travel, and a lot of photography upcoming to the blog, as ever!  Thanks for all the blog love lately, guys & gals!

This was super cute!  Myself, Anna & the bridal party were the only ones expecting this – a little surprise salsa as their first dance!  Anna headed discreetly away to get changed not long before, and shortly after Pete followed & came back in to casually sit down again.  Then, out of no where – walked right up to meet Anna on the dance floor and take the room by storm!  They were both brilliant & have been practicing for weeks!

First things first… Katja, as darling as she looks, isn’t nearly that (see bottom of post & preceeding text).  Well now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s sort out their story and all the cute little details shall we.  It’s funny sometimes when you meet certain people for the very first time and just know we’re all going to click together.  And when that happens with ‘clients’, and I quote clients because by about the first ten minutes they feel like friends for years, it really is exhilarating, and secretly, between you & me, you just want to raise your arms to the sky and scream “thank you!“.  Anyway, on the way to the supermarket on Suomenlinna (getting groceries for our picnic on the rocks at the ocean – yeah, tough life), Katja & I were talking about their relationship in the early stages and apparently Jarkko hadn’t… invested much into his car just yet, and within the first month of them dating – his car broke down, with her inside it, three times.  How to win a girl’s heart folks – there you have it!  And so ever since those days years ago, they’ve been disgustingly adorable & positively glowing with enthusiasm for one another, and for life!

And now to my beloved ‘text at the bottom of the post preceding the image’.  My parents, very lovingly, gave me a few words of wisdom before I left home on this trip… Dad – “Be safe, have fun!”  Mum – “Be safe, don’t do anyting stupid.”  Hi mum, hi dad!  And so being the caring, genuine & enthusiastic photographer I ever so naturally have flourished into (/end sarcasm?), I was crawling through some of the greenery around the fence & garden in the first photo, and apparently there’s a rather… touchy plant that it isn’t advised to rub up against, and ohh, did I have a nice little meet & greet, howdy-doody with it.  At first it was only a little tingling sensation, and within a few minutes it became an extremely painful throbbing like I had (approximately) seventy-five million needles in my arm.  At our following location, Anna had the helm and I took a moment to look at my arm and it was so incredibly textured & red I couldn’t not take a photograph and apparently I was being watched… Thanks for caring guys!  Haha, only joking!  Jarkko & Katja, you guys rock and I totally can’t wait for the day I see you two again!

When Anna mentioned that Teemu & Tuuli didn’t really have a location in mind for their shoot, I immediately jumped – probably literally too, on the opportunity to push for a downtown Helsinki twilight shoot!  I’ve been walking around the area for the past few weeks noticing that literally every single street could be turned into thousands of unique, stunning photographs by day, or by night.  Ohh, I wish I was a wedding photographer here!  Anna mentioned after that apparently these two were ‘camera shy’, and quite obviously, that translates in English to “We’re extremely gorgeous and are pretty much perfect in front of the camera in every way you can imagine”.  I loved the time we had this evening, I loved the locations and Teemu & Tuuli, I loved your willingness to venture into something a little different!  I do hope you enjoy these, and ohh, how I wish I’d be around for your 2010 wedding!

And on a little side note – tomorrow, or rather, in four hours, I’m off to Estonia!  Ohh, how I’m thrilled for that as well!