YAY!!!!!!!!!

Our wedding pictures are in!!!!!! I got the email last night and stayed up late into the night just to take a peek at them. From the quick look we have taken we already love them and I can promise I am going to be staring at them for a good portion of my day :) Especially considering we ended up with 1099, yep that's not an error there are over one thousand pictures from the wedding. Once I get the digital negatives I will begin posting them for all of you to see!

Until then you can go here: http://www.ciullaphotography.com/blog/vanessaandymarried/
to see some of the pictures on our wonderful photographer's blog.

Ahhhh the agony

As of this Friday it will have been six weeks since we got married. First of all that trips me out because I can't possibly fathom that it has really been that long. Secondly we should be recieving our pictures sometime within the next week. Our photographer isn't late, she told us it would be about six weeks but I am just quite impatient.

Dress Decisions

I have decided that before I go and get my dress cleaned I want to take it for another spin. So I have contacted our photographer and am going to do a trash the dress session. I don't necessarily want to trash it trash it but I would mind getting to run around town taking fun pictures and getting it dirty :)

Sneek Peak Pictures

Our fabulous photographer sent us a slideshow of some sneek peak pictures. We love 'em and can't wait to get the rest. Unfortuneatly we are going to have to wait about 5 more weeks. Arggghhhhhhhhh the agony!

http://www.ciullaphotography.com/darkroom/share/?client/vanessaandandy

Lots of good things!

Today I found out that I am getting lots of good and unexpected things.

First I spoke with my florist today to confirm all the flowers and final designs. I found out that ranunculus is pretty much done for the season and even if I was Oprah I couldn't get them. So I was a bit bummed when I heard this. Especially since we are having a gum paste ranunculus on top of our cake to match our flowers, o well.

However instead my florist is going to get for me the coral peonies which are the exact ones from my inspiration picture that we are using to base my bouquet off of. Because of the last minute change due to mother nature I am going to get the peonies without the extra up charge, yay! These peonies are tree peonies and not like the bush ones, they don't have as many layers of petals but either way are pretty!

The big bright flowers are the exact coral peonies I am going to get.

My second good thing is that I found out I am going to get a second photographer the day of my wedding for free! Yep, that's right free. We spoke with our photographer and initially wanted the second photog for the ceremony and bit before hand so that we could make sure we got all the important details. It's not like the photographer can say, "Wait walk back down the aisle I didn't get the shot I wanted."

But when we looked at the timeline we realized we were going to have to add on an hour or two and we couldn't afford adding time and a second photographer. Our photographer's business is starting to boom and she is going to bring the second photographer with her to start to get some more experience before she starts making it standard to have two photographers.

Geri has a new blog!

Even though I have already picked an amazing photographer, Geri Ciulla, I still regularly look at many of the local area photographers and a few well know national ones. There is something about photography that I just love. Looking at all the pictures is inspiring and well just fun. I am very excited that our photographer has a new blog and I will get to see more of her pictures on a regular basis! Check her out over at http://www.ciullaphotography.com/blog/.

Love It!

Gotta love those cool, fall wedding pictures.

Photo taken from Olivia Leigh Photography

Engagement Pictures, Check

Yesterday we took our engagement pictures and it was wonderful! We ended up with a sunny day and blue skies which was all we could ask for. It was a bit chilly but nothing unbearable and I was willing to freeze my butt off for good pictures. We actually were up for doing anything for the pictures because we were having fun! I was afraid Andy would think it was kinda stupid to have engagement pictures and wouldn't understand why we were doing it, but he loved it just as much as me.

Geri is an amazing photographer! Not only is she talented but she was just fun to be with. We get along really well and enjoyed spending close to two hours with her which is great since she will be spending our entire wedding day with us. In fact we probably could have just sat down with her to chat over a cup of coffee but that whole pesky taking pictures thing got in the way. We obviously can't tell you how the pictures look just yet but I have no doubts about them.

The only disappointment out of the whole experience was that there weren't any brilliant colored leaves on any trees which I was hoping for. But you can't control mother nature. Oh yeah and we were out there so long that it got too dark to take any more pictures otherwise we could have kept going. Maybe Geri will let us do this again before the wedding?

Photography

When I was making a photography decision I hadn't created the blog yet so I thought I would go ahead and post about that process since for me it was quite possibly the biggest if not one of the biggest vendor decisions.  After the wedding is over the cake is eaten, the flowers die, invitations get thrown out, the dress goes in the closet but the pictures are the only physical thing you have left that you hopefully will be able to display.  Photography is the documentation of the event you spent lots of time and money planning and of course you want it to be captured and most likely you want something nicer than crooked snapshots Uncle Fred took.

I know I tortured my family with all of my photography talk especially my sister. She was gracious enough to go to all of my initial meetings and then sit with me pouring over photographers' work and listening to me discuss the same stuff over and over and over and over.  I even tormented a few friends at work asking them to look at work and give me their opinions.  I know I was a bit ridiculous during this decision and I thank all of you who endured me throughout the process.

I started with a list of 40+ photographers that I had either found through recommendations on the knot or those who advertised in magazines, websites etc...  After researching these photographers by looking through their online portfolios and pictures from other brides who graciously shared their pictures.   I narrowed it down to my top 15 photographers based on photography style.  After contacting these photographers and getting more information I set up meetings with 5 photographers. There were many other photographers I would have loved to meet with however I didn't want to even look at someone that just was completely out of our ballpark budget wise.   In my opinion you definitely get what you pay for, to an extent, which is why we were willing to splurge a bit if necessary, however you have to draw the line somewhere based on your budget.  I also felt that there had to be great photographers out there that weren't uber expensive, we just had to look harder.  That being said our decision was based on WAY more than price but it's obviously part of the decision making process.

During our meetings I was meticulous about getting all the info I needed and took the same questionairre to all the meetings to make sure I didn't forget to ask anything. A few of them thought I was a bit off my rocker. We then even had a second meeting with my top 2 picks to make the final decision.

I am very excited to say that we are having Geri Ciulla of Ciulla Photography photograph our wedding! She has amazing style and does beautiful work that speaks for itself. She has an eye for catching all the details and the small moments some people might miss.  But on top of it all she has a great personality and is full of energy!  Both myself and Andy clicked with her which was important since she will be with us all day.  She didn't bat an eye at any of my questions and even seemed to appreciate that I was making sure to do the correct work to know that we would be a good fit.  She is definitely worth every penny and I know she could charge way more and I would still be happy to pay her fees.

Check out her work on her website or blog.