Two things that kind of scare me as a photographer: high wind and bright sun. I really have an affinity for shooting in during overcast days. Anyway, when I went down to the oceanfront to photograph a styled bridal session coordinated by Viktoriya of The Hanging Gardens, it was both very windy and very sunny. However, I embraced the unknown and we ended up with some gorgeous pictures. Jen, our beautiful model, absolutely rocked it, and basically this session ended up being the stuff of dreams.

Lay thine eyes upon our beaut of a garden! Look at it! Okay, you can stop now.

Anyway, the last time we blogged about anything garden related, it was us starting SEEDS! See all those tomato plants at the front of this picture? Those were little seeds I put in like a tablespoon of dirt back in March, and they sprouted and now they have FRUIT on them. Four of them are heirloom tomato plants, so I can use their seeds for next year (if I remember while devouring them…). That’s kind of the point though, because we eventually want to be able to grow everything year after year from the seeds of our last crop. Sustainability, y’all.

Tiffany and Danny got engaged last fall, and their wedding is kind of special to Mark and I- because it’s the first wedding we have in Virginia Beach! Isn’t it crazy that we’ve not shot ONE wedding in our own town yet??? I think so, but I’m also happy that people love us enough to keep hiring us, and wholeheartedly recommending us even though we have to charge traveling fees. I love that all of our clients feel like family and want the best for us, and visa versa.

It’s been several months now since this shoot, and yet I’ve still not blogged the other half, so here it is today! Whitney and Robbie, the gorgeous couple that modelled for us, have been married for almost 4 years, but they acted every bit like newly weds. They are doing such a good job keeping the joy alive, and that made it so easy to capture their love for each other. They were joking around and laughing the whole time.

Shannon and Jason are going to be parents!! They got married around the same time we did, and we actually shared some of our wedding decorations. I’ve known Shannon for what feels like forever- she went to school with my best friends and went to the same church occasionally.

In the spirit of celebrating our anniversary all week (just like we call every vacation we go on our honeymoon… suppose that will stop when we have children hahaaaa), here’s a blog post with a few of our favorite pictures from our wedding day (thanks to The Photography Smiths).

We had the fun opportunity to get to know Christen Allocco, of Allocco Design a few weeks ago. She just got married this past March and we met up with her at the Pagoda in Norfolk during the golden hour(s) to take some bridal portraits.

It’s Mark. Katherine and I love cooking food, and we love eating what we cook even more. Trying to cook delicious, healthy food on a budget is pretty tough, though. What’s helped the most is learning how to reuse things we used to throw out, like bones/carcass, pasta noodle water, and vegetable ends/roots.

All that is great, and having those skills can help you round out your weekly meal plan into a robust and exciting course. That said, there is a staple we can always fall back on, a hero of the food world, one that everybody knows and loves: pizza.

For us, wedding days begin with the details. It’s actually become one of my favorite parts of the day because it allows us to get creative with how to tie the whole ‘big picture’ of the wedding together using the smaller elements of the day. We try to give ourselves ample time to photograph them as soon as we arrive- which is why we now ask all of our brides to have a ‘detail kit’ ready for us! This way, we can walk in, hug and be giddy (because, HELLO, it’s your WEDDING DAY!! and I also must state that only I will be giddy, as giddy does not describe Mark as a person at all), and then we can get straight to work making all of your hard work look gorgeous.

I had a plan for a different blog today, but this is too amazing of a story not to share.
There’s a lot of stuff to glean from this experience. A lot to realize and be thankful for.