jericho beach love story / Lorel & Sean's Wedding

I don't often photograph weddings, but this one was special.  

Lorelei and I met a few years ago; we were both working at Earls.  I was living with my sister in an attic and missing my boyfriend who was working in Los Angeles.  She was studying acting, she lived just a few blocks away from us & we became friends over slices of pizza.  Throughout the course of our friendship, we have eaten lots of 5-cent sour candies and avocado tempura and Denny's Tsing Tsing Chicken (which they don't make anymore - WHAAAAT?!) & God has given us many crazy adventures together.  

A few years later, I got married and started my photography business; Lorel graduated and became a full-time nanny before going back to school for nursing.  And somewhere in there, she realized that a tall guy who had been her best friend in school (and who, incidentally, loves 5-cent candies almost as much as she does) was the love of her life.  This is the story of the day they got married.

Because they were planning a wedding in Mexico, this was their legal ceremony.  I was pregnant and due just before their Mexico wedding date, so I knew I wouldn't be able to make it for the real ceremony, but this gathering of their Vancouver loved ones was perfect for them: impromptu, delightful, and filled with laughter and hugs and red converse shoes.

It was a little miracle that I was able to photograph this day, because the very next morning, I was at the hospital, giving birth to our son!

2 months later...

Hello everyone!  I haven't updated my blog in a couple months, and here's why:

(Yes, he looks like Tintin.)  Matthias is almost 3 months old, and right now, he's smiling happily at the stuffed monkey dangling from his activity gym. 

I've started doing shoots again & have finally sent off all the sessions from before this little guy was born - which means I have many photos to share with you!  I've even got sessions from LAST July that I haven't posted yet.  (I'm not kidding.)  Apparently being pregnant & becoming a mom is time-consuming?  Who knew!

(Matthias just noticed his reflection in the activity gym mirror.  This will keep him occupied for a while.)

While I try to figure out which session to begin with, I'm going to put up a few photos from sessions over the past few months.
 

vancouver photographer // and this was 2013

So before you start - this post is packed with photos.  I don't even know how many photos it has, that's how many  there are.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

It made me smile to look back over all my 2013 sessions - so many amazing people I met and laughed with - families & couples & babies & moms & dads & stories, and each were beautiful in their own way.  I feel so blessed to have met them and been chosen to document their stories.  

I was recently doing a maternity session for a couple I've photographed before, and as I asked her to pose in some strange and uncomfortable position, I said, "I'm sorry - I bet you didn't come here expecting to have some crazy photographer tell you to do this!"   She looked at her husband and laughed and said, "Actually, it was the same last time..."

:) So thank you to everyone who let me photograph you & who put up with all of my crazy ideas.  Here's looking at 2014!

langley engagement photographer // rainy day engagement session

Taylor is my cousin, and Esther is a beautiful girl with awesome hair.  He's known her all his life, but one day it suddenly hit him that he liked her.  So he asked her out.  And she said yes.  And they became boyfriend and girlfriend.  It was even facebook official!

However, there was a catch: this happened about two weeks before he was leaving on a year-long mission trip to Mongolia.  (MONGOLIA?  Yes, Mongolia.) Great timing, right?  It makes me laugh, because it seems so very...Taylor...to wait until the last minute to ask out the love of his life!

Anyways.  They survived long distance and he survived the extreme cold and grew a moustache, perhaps as a way to cope with the weather - let's not talk about that - and they were reunited at long last, and then, within a few months, they were married!

Before the wedding, though, I got to take their engagement pictures.  It was a day full of rain, with a predicted thunderstorm, but they were still up for it!  So we wandered to a field in the middle-of-nowhere-Langley and then raced to White Rock to catch the fiery-red sunset.  And I had lots of fun, and I think they're the most adorable couple, and I'm so glad I got to photograph them, and I know God is going to bless them in their new and exciting life together!

Vancouver engagement photographer // you can bring me flowers

I was excited when I received an email from Sara, because she does what I always wanted to do when I grew up: she's a florist.  It was very exciting to meet a real live florist.

It was also very exciting that her engagement session would involve flowers, flowers and flowers!  And old books.  And their love story of Canadian boy meets Australian girl and falls in love.  (A tale as old as time, and one that gets awesomer each time I hear it.)

Sara & Ryan knew the perfect location for their engagement session: an archway of trees at Stanley Park that they'd often walked through.  The morning was overcast and their outfits were amazing (seriously - I want her closet!) , and they brought along an afghan blanket made by Ryan's grandmother (how awesome is that?!) and the world was beautiful and so were they.

Congratulations again, Sara & Ryan!