Back when I was in the throes of wedding planning, I pitched a story to my editor on what it’s like to plan a reception back home after a destination wedding. I hadn’t found too many resources on the topic, so I thought it’d be helpful for fellow brides in a similar situation. As luck would have it, she loved the idea and asked me to write a piece for an upcoming issue!

This week, the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Minnesota Bride hit newsstands and the web with the story–and our photos! The article features one of our favorite images from California and some details shots from the Minnesota reception. You can check out the story online here: http://bit.ly/4Dsp1M.

Minnesota Bride is available at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Byerlys, Coborns, Cub Foods, Festival Foods, Lunds, Target and other fine retailers.

We know we’re a little late in posting this one, but we couldn’t help adding images from one of our favorite weddings last summer. Liz and Lamont were married June 20, 2009, at the Carlson Towers Rotunda in Minnetonka, Minnesota. They held an outdoor ceremony by the lake (with gorgeous weather!), followed by a party inside the Rotunda. It was such a pleasure to work with them and the rest of their fun-loving wedding party.

Side note: This album was one of our award winners from a recent Twin Cities Professional Photographers Association album competition. View this entry here.

Be sure to view the Kidd wedding album on our Facebook fan page!

Monday, November 9, 2009 was the annual TCPPA (Twin Cities Professional Photographers of America) Competition. A photographer can enter up to 3 prints, folios, or albums. I have entered all three categories in the past, but this year I decided to put my eggs all in one basket and enter 3 albums. I chose: Molly and Joe’s wedding album, the Jensen-Kidd wedding, and a boudoir album. Many photographers don’t enter albums, because it is the hardest category to score a “merit” (a score of over 80) blue ribbon. I was thrilled to earn a blue ribbon for each album! (There was only one other album which earned a blue ribbon that evening.)

Coming soon to the website: a flash ‘movie’ of Molly and Joe’s wedding album, as well as the Jensen-Kidd album when it arrives (soon I think) from Italy. Or, better yet, visit my studio and you can view all three albums in person.

I dropped everything and sped to Burnsville as fast as I could when I got the call: My wedding album had come in!

After hours of looking at the proofs and painstakingly deliberating over which ones I wanted to include in our finished album, I was all too excited to view the final product. My mom and I carefully lifted the chocolate-colored leather album from its shipping box and spent the next half-hour oohing and aahing over the images. As I suspected, GraphiStudio in Italy once again delivered a beautiful product and made me happy that they are our chosen wedding album supplier. My album sits proudly on a side table in our living room, but we have a smaller version at the studio if you’d like to check it out yourself.

Click here to view the pages from my wedding album, which we also entered in the TCPPA wedding album competition last week and earned a blue ribbon!

If you are thinking of a wedding in California’s gorgeous wine country, be sure to view our destination wedding packages.

Alexa and I met during my senior year of college at the University of Minnesota. We were both in the student journalism group, the Society of Professional Journalists, at the U. Almost immediately, we became friends. Even after graduation and her moving to Iowa (then coming back!), we stayed close. She even served as one of my bridesmaids at my wedding last spring.

Alexa met Ben shortly after she moved back from Iowa. A mutual work friend at KSTP (where Ben currently works and Alexa held a job during school) invited them both to a picnic where they quickly hit it off. A group-lunch-turned-first-date was in the works a few weeks later and then, as they say, the rest is history… The two have been inseparable ever sense.

So it was no surprise when they got engaged on a trip to Las Vegas in March 2009. (Side note: Alexa, Ben, Joe and I had dinner together a few days before they left for Vegas. During dinner, as soon as Alexa went to the bathroom, Ben confided that they were getting engaged on the trip. It was pretty hard for me to keep that secret from her!) Almost immediately after, Alexa contacted us to get her wedding date on the calendar.

Alexa and Ben chose a park near Lake Harriet for their engagement pictures–the park where they first met during that picnic. They brought along their Yorkshire Terrier, Cooper, to be in some of the photos. (He is an honorary groomsman, after all!) You can see their love for each other in the photos; it practically beams off of their faces.

I’m so happy for the two of them and can’t wait to photograph their wedding in June 2010! Congratulations, Alexa & Ben!

Cousin #3 got married this year – first Molly, then Lynn, and now Stacy. So we were off to Michigan for the second time in two weeks! Only this time it was to the opposite “shore” of Michigan – the Lake Michigan side.

Stacy grew up in the Upper Penninsula on Lake Superior and she and her sisters will say, “It’s not a lake if you can see the other side!” She, like her older sister Kelly, wanted a casual outdoor wedding with photos taken on the beach at Lake Michigan. Stacy really got lucky with the weather – it was sunny and 80 degrees. The bridesmaids in their strapless dresses actually got sunburned while being photographed in the sand dunes and on the beach!

I had to remind Stacy that her first choice of dates was August 29th, but that was Lynn’s wedding. She gave me two other dates and I helped her pick September 12th. Well… August 29th was windy and COLD, so I kept telling her, “you OWE me!” I can’t even imagine how cold it would have been on Lake Michigan on the 29th – yikes!

Molly and I started photographing Stacy and Paul at their house near Holland, then the wedding party hopped in a van and we all went to the lake. The ceremony and reception was held at nearby Apple Blossom Chapel and Gardens. They got married under a pretty gazebo, and then ate and danced in an ENORMOUS white “circus” tent. The gorgeous sunset faded into a chilly, star studded night sky and little white lights lit up the grounds. It was all so beautiful, Stacy couldn’t have ordered a more perfect day!

To view more images of Stacy & Paul, visit our fan page on Facebook.

Molly and I had the pleasure of photographing my niece’s wedding in Michigan this past weekend. The main concern leading up to the big event was whether it would be blazing hot sitting in the unshaded garden where the ceremony was to be held.  Not to worry: with the temperature in the low 60’s and 30 – 40 mph winds, there was a definite windchill to contend with!  But, as with all weddings, nothing could put a damper on this lovely affair which was held at Fox Hills Country Club in Plymouth, Michigan.    …and, as I always tell my brides: “you won’t be able to tell in the photos that you were freezing cold”! (except in the photo where the women wore the men’s jackets to keep warm).

As I experienced with Molly’s wedding in May, it is so emotional to photograph a family member’s wedding. It seems like just yesterday that baby Lynn learned to walk at my house when my brother’s family visited us in Minnesota. And now here we are… the day Lynn walks down the aisle to become Mrs. Johnson. sigh…..

Congratulations to Lynn and Brad. Enjoy your honeymoon in Mexico and we can’t wait to share all the photos with you!