Monica & Ali {Wedding} Santa Barbara

Amanda — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:46:17 +0000

Normally, my client booking process looks a little something like this: client emails, I email back, we find a time to meet, they come to my studio, they book, we shoot their engagement session, we laugh and have fun, then we shoot their wedding! That’s a lot of interaction! And I love every second of it. But every once in a while you have someone that breaks the cycle. Monica contacted me several months ago inquiring about wedding photography. She’s from Sacramento planning a wedding in Santa Barbara. So. We had to have our consultation appointment over.the.phone. My phone skills leave a LOT to be desired. (Mike has actually taken over that duty HALLELUJAH!!). So after I got off the phone with Monica and stumbled over every other word, I thought to myself…”well I’ll never hear from her again!” Lo and behold a couple days later she called back saying she wanted to book!

And, boy, am I glad she did! The first time we ever met in real life was on the day of her wedding and it took about 45 seconds to feel like part of the family. Mike got to spend the morning with her fabulous groom, Ali. And by the end of the day we made so many new friends with Monica and Ali’s wonderful friends and family!

Here’s how we saw their day:

Monica got ready at the Fess Parker Doubletree in Santa Barbara. Such a beautiful hotel with gorgeous grounds.

My new favorite shoe shot! I love the pink against the pink!

The greatest moment of my life? When I showed Monica the back of the camera after the following picture and she exclaimed: That’s exactly how I wanted to look!!!!

She matched her shoes to her tattoo!

Monica and Ali were wed at the Santa Barbara Courthouse.

I love paisley!

So they brought their dog, Bradley, down for the occasion. In the middle of the ceremony, the priest invited them to take a moment to stop and enjoy their day and look around at their guests. Monica asked “where’s Bradley” and Ali pointed him out to her…she laughed so hard seeing her cute pooch with a bow-tie on!

Ok, Stella Mare’s is the CUTEST restaurant to have a reception. It is a French Country restaurant in Santa Barbara and the portion they had the reception is a greenhouse! And it’s so stinkin’ cute!

So cute and charming:

Birch wood vase:

Gorgeous cake by the ever fabulous Jana’s Creative Cakes!

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Meet {Michelle & Eric} Santa Barbara

Amanda — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:56:53 +0000

When we first met with Michelle and Erik to discuss their wedding, they already knew exactly where they wanted their engagement session: The Santa Barbara Courthouse and The Santa Barbara Mission. Done and done. I’ve actually never photographed at either location so I was very excited (I LOVE shooting at new locations!) So, Mike and I show up early, as always, to scope the area and as soon as we park at the courthouse we hear very loud music. And as we walk into the courtyard it looks like it is set up for a huge concert and they are doing the sound check. So I’m thinking great, this soundcheck is so loud we won’t be able to talk to them during their entire session! Luckily, they were just doing soundcheck for Easter Sunday service the following morning. By the time Michelle and Erik showed up they were done! But we did have to navigate around the huge setup they had going on without getting it in our pictures. I think we did a pretty good job.

On another note…Michelle gets happiest bride of the year award. I don’t officially hand out awards here at Amanda Rae Photography but if I did she would get that award. Just take a look at these pictures and you’ll see what I mean.

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Normally if Mike and I get similar shots I’ll just show mine But I noticed a couple of times during this session where we got completely different angles of the same moment and it’s so fun to see how we each interpret that moment! This is my view:

And this is how Mike saw it:

One more time…this is what I saw:

And this is what Mike saw:

That was fun…onto the regular programming…

So, after we were done at the Santa Barbara Courthouse we separated to walk to our own cars to head over to the Mission. As we walked down this side street to get to our car we saw this balloon tunnel. Just sitting there all by itself. We ran back and yelled for Michelle and Erik to come back to play in it a little.

We all played:

Now, The Santa Barbara Mission:

One more of my view/his view. This is mine:

Mike’s view:

These last few pictures were all Mike’s, but I particularly love this shot he got:

One last picture…the dog joined! So cute!

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Amanda Rae Photography Blog » santa barbara courthouse

Monica & Ali {Wedding} Santa Barbara

Meet {Michelle & Eric} Santa Barbara