Lilac Dude and I booked a photographer yesterday! One more thing to check off of the list and I love checking things off.

When we met to interview with him we took a list of questions that we had put together with our parents. I wanted to share our questions with you all. Our list looked like this:
- Who will actually be photographing the wedding? We wanted to make sure that the main guy would be there instead of sending someone else.
- How long have you been in business/doing photography? Our parents were wondering about this one the most. If you are helping a friend start up a business that’s totally cool, but if you’re hiring a stranger it’s nice to know about experience.
- How long after our wedding will we receive our photos? We had horror stories from friends who waited 6 months to up to a year and a half.
- What are your cancelation and date change policies? We don’t expect anything to change but it’s nice to know what the plans are if the unexpected does happen.
- What’s your back up system? When my parents got married the photographer lost a whole roll of film. With digital photos that’s less of a concern, however memory cards must be changed and the pictures have to be stored somewhere. Our photographer keeps the cards on his person until he downloads the pictures to two separate computers and stores the cards in a safe. Lilac Dude and I were pretty impressed!
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Having a perfectly even wedding party was something that I thought would be vital to a wedding day. It ends up, having our wedding party perfectly uneven worked out better for us. After the ceremony and before dinner was served, we had a little bit of time to take the wedding party portraits. Granted they weren’t the most formal or organized, but we love how they turned out!
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First of all, thanks for coming around! I know it has been nearly a month since my last post, and I am thankful that you are here to follow this bride’s emotional journey
The last we left off, I was getting over some bridezilla frustration, and we were just getting started with the portraits. It’s strange thinking back on this time, and although it really was just a photo shoot, it amazes me that it was so relaxing. I look at this next picture, and am just so thankful for my girls. They have been with me through the thick and thin of it all (we grew up together, so when I say “it all”, it really does mean “it all”!) and having them looking GORGEOUS, trudging through a WET farmer’s field on a pretty cold September day, all the while having their show-stopping smiles on, it makes perfect sense why it was so relaxing!
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I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo excited that we got our wedding photos back today!!! Here are just a few of my favorites:


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When considering the location for our engagement photos, it was easy for me and Calla Lily Dude to choose UC Davis because we lived in Davis, CA at the time and met going to college there.
But, I found it was not this easy to find the perfect location to take pictures the day of our wedding… While I love our lake-side venue, the immediate exterior isn’t as picturesque as I would like (and right next to a bird estuary!) and the interior won’t be decorated in time to take pictures before the ceremony.
And lo and behold, the gorgeous lake-view promenade I had my heart set on as perfect location to take pictures before the ceremony…
 from http://www.victorvolta.com
…is currently under construction and will not be ready in time for our wedding
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So one of our photographers (Kevan, of Kevan and Duane from 6:8 Photography) emailed me the other day, to ask me about our plans for photography for the wedding day. He wanted to suggest a location that was spectacular, but needed ~ 35 minutes (and a 4×4) to reach. The pros were… amazing photos, totally different from our engagement pictures, oh, and did I mention spectacular shots?? The cons were… took a bit of time to drive to, which would cut back on the number of shots we got in Fernie, and we needed a 4×4 to get there. BUT, to these I would argue, Fernie is cute and all, but let’s face it, we are there for the mountains, not the 1 street downtown. We got our engagement pics done all urban-ed up, so we really aren’t concerned about getting any skyscrapers in our pictures (of course there aren’t any anyways in Fernie). And is a 4×4 trek on your wedding day ever a con?? I say heck-no, let’s crack a road-pop while we’re at it!! (PS… road poppin in Western Canada is totally legit, although never legal!!)
How spectacular would the shots be you ask?? Well, feast your eyes bride-buds…
(picture borrowed from Kevan’s email, props to 6:8 Photography)
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Honeysuckle Dude and I decided not to go on a honeymoon immediately after the wedding mostly due to scheduling. We’re both teachers and so taking off in the middle of a semester was not going to fly.
 Photo by Liz Duren
Postponing the honeymoon until a school break really didn’t come as a disappointment as we found lots of benefits in delaying the honeymoon, such as:
- less stress- Planning the wedding is stressful enough. I’m glad I didn’t have to add planning an itinerary for the honeymoon as I was busy with all of those last minute details. We also didn’t have to worry about packing everything for the honeymoon and make travel arrangements.
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When I look at people’s wedding albums, I’m always totally in love with the shots of the rings! Since I don’t want our photographer to have to spend loads of time setting up all kinds of wedding ring shots on our Big Day, I thought I would take a stab at it myself. Doing it yourself can make it a very personal image.
 Take advantage of unique locations, like this one taken in Mexico
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Initially during our planning we had not meant to do a reveal. We had wanted to wait and have that special moment of seeing each other for the first time as I was walking down the aisle. Since we weren’t doing many traditional wedding things, Honeysuckle Dude was kind of looking forward to seeing me in my dress for the first time when I walked down the aisle. And to be honest, I was eager for that whole “Oh my gosh, this is it!” fairytale moment too. If you think about it, our culture has really romanticized the tradition of the bride and groom not seeing each other until the ceremony. I was a bit let down by having to schedule a reveal and doing pictures ahead of time. It just felt like staging that special moment and taking something away from the ceremony.
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Howdy!
I’m so excited to be a Bridal Bud! It was an early holiday gift to be invited to be a part of this awesome community. I’m so eager to share my planning experiences (including the stressful and regrettable) with you readers who are planning right now. I hope I can help in some way. So…a little bit about me, huh?
Honeysuckle Dude and I met in high school when my family moved to NC. We were friends in high school but never dated (although we came close junior year). We’re a pretty close couple since we went to school together (high school and college), worked together, taught together (during our internship), etc. We are that couple that people refer to as one name; we’re HoneysuckleBlossomandDude. Initially, I would have thought all that time spent together would get boring or overwhelming, but it isn’t bad at all. He’s my best friend, and I enjoy his company. That doesn’t mean we have to do the same thing all the time. In fact, it’s wonderful to be home together but separately doing what we both enjoy (which usually means playing on the Wii for him and catching up on blogs for me).
 First pictures of us as a couple from March 2004
When we began planning our wedding, the word that kept recurring in our conversations with family and vendors was intimate. Aside from the sexual connotations of that word, all of the definitions really seem to convey our feelings for our wedding. We wanted a warm celebration held with very close friends. We wanted it to be small and somewhat private and expressing our deep love for one another and those with us. Our favorite definition of the word intimate was: “showing a close union,” which is exactly what our intimate wedding did.
 Similar pose from our October 2008 wedding; photo by f8 PhotoStudios
Challenge: What 3 words describe your wedding?
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