Melissa & Mike decided to do a Day After Session & Trash the Dress session the day after their wedding! They wanted to do some fun photos in the ocean to celebrate their beach wedding and get some more relaxed photos around the Ritz Carlton property. Check out a few of my favorite images from our session:

Congrats, Melissa & Mike!! Adrian and I had such a great time working with you for your wedding weekend! We are so excited for you both and wish you a lifetime of love & happiness together!!

Melissa and I have been good friends since the first day of 6th Grade so I was absolutely thrilled when she asked me and Adrian to be her wedding photographers! Adrian and I (plus our assistant shooter for the day, Justin) took literally thousands of images between all three of us, so it will take a while to narrow it down to the very best keepers (since there will be a lot – how can you go wrong with a couple this gorgeous?) but here are a few favorites from Melissa & Mike’s wedding day.

Melissa & Mike decided to have a “First Look” so that they could enjoy some of their cocktail hour. I love when couples opt for the First Look because it lets us get more great lifestyle portraits in beautiful light!

Melissa looks SO happy here… I know she is meant to be with Mike forever because I don’t think I’ve ever seen this look on her face in all the 16 years that I’ve known her!

Here’s one from their beautiful ceremony – and that look on Melissa’s face again! I love it! It makes me so happy to see such a good friend filled with this kind of joy. Melissa & Mike’s ceremony was so lighthearted, happy, and full of love.

The last wedding preview – Melissa & Mike’s first dance was a carefully choreographed and much-practiced tango! They performed an amazing dance for their first dance as husband and wife, and don’t you just love that Melissa has a rose between her teeth?

The following day we did a Trash the Dress/Bridal shoot. While the waves were pretty bad, we still managed to get some fun images in the water – thankfully I remembered to take my iPhone out of my pocket before going waist-deep… that would have been a nightmare, lol. Here’s one of my favorites:

And this one was Mike’s idea – you can see his fun personality coming out for sure in this image!

Melissa & Mike, I hope that you enjoy your previews! Once I finish wading through and editing the gigantor folder of images from your wedding, I will get the rest of your blog entry + slideshow up. :) I hope you had an amazing time in the Caribbean on your honeymoon!

Danielle & Steven’s Harbor Beach Marriott wedding was absolutely beautiful! They had a smaller wedding with lots of family and friends and scheduled so much time for portraits, which I think is super important to really capture the essence of the couple on their wedding day. We had a great time with Danielle, Steven, and their families. Here are some of my favorites from their special day!

When I arrived at the hotel, Danielle was getting ready for the wedding with her bridesmaids, sister, and her mom.

Danielle looked so incredibly gorgeous!! I couldn’t resist taking a couple moments for bridal portraits in her awesome hotel suite.

Soon, we went downstairs. Danielle and her dad waited nervously by the door until it was time for them to walk down the aisle.

Danielle & her dad both seemed emotional once they arrived down at the gazebo where Steven awaited his bride.

The ceremony was so beautiful. Danielle is such an expressive person – I loved watching the different emotions that crossed her face during the ceremony. It was very touching, and so obvious how much these two love each other!

Married at last! Danielle & Steven waved at their guests after they sealed their commitment with a kiss. It was such perfect, bright, sunny day!

I was so excited to see this photo from Danielle & Steven’s engagement session on the table with their guestbook! It looked gorgeous.

Danielle & Steven’s cake was as yummy as it was beautiful! And check out that mod-looking cake topper! I loved it!

Danielle & Steven shared their first dance as a married couple, and also with their parents.

They used these gorgeous champagne flutes during the toasts. I love the hearts!

Danielle’s dreamy looking flowers…

When the reception was over, it was time for PORTRAITS! Yay! We started out in front of the hotel where it was lush, green, and beautiful.

And then, we headed to the beach…

Where Danielle trashed her dress on her wedding day!!!! I absolutely adore this image that Adrian captured of Danielle splashing around in the ocean!

She looked like a mermaid with her beautiful gown in the water and sand.

Danielle & Steven, I am so glad that we’ve gotten to know you both over the past year… it was such a pleasure to photograph your wedding and share your special day with you. Adrian and I wish you all the best!!

Ceremony & Reception at the Harbor Beach Marriott (Jennifer & Delette)
Makeup by Mark Tallon
Hair by Natalie Luca

Danielle & Steven got married recently at the Harbor Beach Marriott in Fort Lauderdale. We had a fantastic time at their wedding and were so excited with all of the time that the couple provided for amazing portraits.

I wonder what they’re off to do in this photo…. Hmm!

More photos to come!

Ashley & Ben waited two months after their wedding to do their Day After Session, but you get the idea! :) They wanted to go with a very gothic/vintage/old world feel for their portraits, and the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami is the perfect place for something like that. I am so happy with their photos and I feel that we really captured the spirit of this awesome couple and great location!

One thing I loved about this session was that Ashley and Ben brought their own props/accessories – a vintage style hat and suspenders for Ben, and Ashley’s awesome top hat, choker, wrist cuffs, and red parasol! I highly encourage couples to do this kind of thing for their photo sessions as it really brings their personalities out.

Now… Check out my favorites!

Ashley REALLY wanted to jump into one of the fountains for our last shot of the day, and since it seemed pretty quiet, I told her to go for it! We only had a few moments to shoot before a security guard came running, blowing his whistle at us, but I absolutely loved the shot that turned out!

Since Julie & Remi hail from the frozen North of Canada, they chose to do their Day After/Trash the Dress Session at a place decidedly Floridian – the beautiful Venetian Pool in Coral Gables!

We started the session with some portraits around the beautiful grounds of the pool, and ended with Julie & Remi taking a dip in a secluded area under a small waterfall. The entire location was so beautiful and though open to the public, was still a very private & easy place to take photos!

Here are my favorites from our session:

Julie & Remi, we had a lot of fun spending time with you both! I know you have many great memories of your wedding week here in Florida, and hope to see you again the next time you come visit The Sunshine State! :)

Here are some of the photos I took of Roz, another model that I had the opportunity to work with in Tampa to do some bridal/trash the dress portraits with. She was fun to work with and had a great style!

This one is a little “out there” for a bridal portrait, but I still like it anyway. :)

And finally, this is my new friend, Chelsea Elizabeth, an awesome photographer from California. I had a lot of fun shooting with her!

I’ve made a new page all about Trash the Dress, so if you had any questions before and were hesitant to set up a shoot with me, hopefully this will help answer them!

Adrian and I are back from the Digital Wedding Forum convention and Imaging USA. DWF was by far one of the most amazing and worthwhile conventions I have ever been to! Everyone I met was so wonderful and willing to share, and I got to hear some of my favorite photographers speak, like Jesh de Rox, Jessica Claire, the Bebbs, the Radlinskis, Michelle Turner, Susan Stripling, and SO MANY MORE!!! I also made some wonderful new friends and it was awesome to finally meet all the people I’ve been chatting with online on the forum for the past year!

On Sunday, one of my fellow photographers, Alicia D’Amico, organized a Trash the Dress shoot. She got some incredible models from the Tampa area, which is where we were all staying, and we ran around the hotel shooting and exploring and practicing what we had just learned in our seminars.

Here are four of my favorite images to start, from a model named Krystal who was definitely not afraid to get wet! More will be coming from the other model I worked with, as I process the images.

Hope you enjoyed these as much as I enjoyed making them.
For those of you who care, I edited these with a mixture of the Boutwells’ Totally Rad Actions and my brand new Sallee Solutions actions which I purchased at Imaging USA. :)

There’s been lots of buzz about “Trash the Dress” sessions lately, and Adrian and I were really excited when Jen approached us and asked us to do her TTD session as a gift for her husband. She’s married with kids, but never had the big wedding dress and always wanted to do a fun bridal session – but I don’t think she expected to have this much fun!! This session was done at Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne – it was a beautiful and secluded location – perfect for a photo shoot!

The term “Trash the Dress” is actually kind of a misnomer – the dress isn’t really being trashed. In most cases, the bride is just doing something a little whimsical in her dress or simply allowing herself to have fun and not care whether the dress gets a little dirty. In fact, what happens to your dress is nothing that a trip to the dry cleaners couldn’t take care of.

Anyway, on to the pictures – Adrian and I had the opportunity to be creative with this photo shoot, and as such, that’s certainly reflected in the style of editing I chose to use. I wanted to achieve a really carefree, dreamy, fantastical look, and I think I succeeded! Please feel free to comment with your thoughts.

Some friends that I showed these photos to asked me how Adrian and I were able to get a few of these shots, particularly the ones in the water… so I decided to include two photos of us on the job!

Here I am photographing Jen and wearing my new Shootsac, a lens bag for professional photographers:

Adrian was a little more adventurous than me this time around (mainly because he’d actually remembered to bring a change of clothes, while I’d forgotten!), so I got this great photo of him in the water:

You can see more Trash the Dress examples from all over the country and learn more about it by visiting TrashTheDress.com.

If you’re interested in booking a Trash the Dress session, please give me a call at 954-724-8321. I promise it’ll be loads of fun!

Adrian and I recently went for a bridal photography session in Coral Gables with several other wedding photographers. This is a beautiful area of South Florida that is known for its Spanish style and coral rock.
Here are two of our favorites from this session: