Providence Baptist Church and Cobblestone Hall: The Wedding of Gwen+Nick

This was our very last wedding of 2011 held on December 17th. :) The day after, I flew to Pittsburgh to be home with my family for the holidays, and Gwen and Nick were patient and kind enough to be cool with me editing them when I got back in January. We could not have ended the year on a better note. Gwen, as you may recall from her engagement session, was a teaching co-worker of mine when I taught 2nd grade. She still teaches alongside my other teacher co-workers Jen (who was a bridesmaid in the wedding) and Sara (who did Gwen’s lovely makeup). It was so wonderful to see all of them again and to photograph Gwen and Nick’s family and friends on their wedding day. :) They’re such a sweet and loving couple… and December was the perfect month for them to get married as it’s an important month in their faith as well as a time when Gwen gets a little time off from work. ;) They combined adorable Christmas elements into their wedding… and I nearly cracked up when Gwen told me she was having her guests decorate ornaments for a tree while they were getting their pictures taken to occupy them (it was a very teacher-like craft assignment and amazing!).

Gwen looked beautiful and stunning, as always and Nick and his groomsmen looked awesome in their grey suits (I’m a sucker for grey suits and they photograph so well). Their ceremony took place in the church where they met. Their reception had a Cheerwine toast, a cheesecake bar, and a toilet papered getaway car that almost caught fire from their sparkler exit. ;) It was a beautiful day and I was happy to be there with them. Hope the pictures were worth the wait, guys. xo.

First Dance Song: “You and Me” – Lifehouse

Bride’s Occupation: 4th Grade Teacher

Groom’s Occupation: Software Developer

How You Met: Through our Sunday School class at Providence Baptist Church

Interesting Bride Fact: Competed in the NCAA DIII National Championship game in senior year of college

Interesting Groom Fact: Was the state champion in the floor routine as a 12 year old

Honeymoon Destination: Cruise to the Western Caribbean out of Tampa, FL

Date: December 17, 2011

Ceremony Venue: Providence Baptist Church // Raleigh, NC

Reception Venue: Cobblestone Hall // Raleigh, NC

DJ: Uniq Events

Florist: Harris Teeter

Cake: Melody Sawyer (friend)

Cheesecakes: The Twisted Fork

Hair: Kim Braddy

Makeup: Sara Haan // Makeup For Your Day

Coordinator: April Collier

The CSP Class of 2011.

A lot of you know I used to be a teacher. When you’re a teacher, you have a class of about 25-30 kids a year (plus their parents). You have initial meetings with them before the first day of school, then you batten down the hatches and go through the year with occasional consults in between. At the end of the year, you say farewell and hope they’ll stop by your class again as they get older.

Photography is not unlike that. I have about 30 couples (for weddings) a year (plus their parents…haha). I have initial consults with them, and then we batten down the hatches and go through the wedding planning, wedding photographing, wedding editing process. At the end of the year I bid them farewell and hope that I’ll see hear from them again down the road, either for a session or for coffee. :) Then I look at the list of the names on my Class of 2012 and think about all that we’re excited for.

So goodbye, Class of 2011! Each and every one of you were fabulous. We went to some incredible places and photographed some of our loveliest weddings yet. Better still, we made a lot of close friends out of some of our clients this year… which is probably the thing that I treasure most out of this job. We’re sooo excited to see what next year brings. Here are our favorites from the Class of 2011 (one picture from each portrait and wedding session we did).

As an added bonus, we’ve decided to show some outtakes of ourselves from some of our portraits and weddings. We take a lot of pictures. And, let’s face it, these are our weekends and weekdays too… so documenting your shindig is essentially documenting our lives… no matter how disheveled we look. ;) And trust us, we look pretty disheveled in some of these. But typically these are after a 10 hour work day with occasionally no food but lots of caffeine, so I’d say we’re looking pretty okay considering! ;) :P I find the evolution of my hairstyle and Geoff’s beard particularly amusing.

Happy, happy new year everyone…. here’s to a healthy, happy, and safe 2012 for all our families, friends, clients, and blog stalkers!

Happy holidays from us to you.

This is my second-to-last blog post before the end of the year (my last one, coming in a few days, is our best of 2011 post). I don’t post personal stuff terribly frequently, but before the Best Of post I wanted to say Happy Holidays to all of our clients in all different parts of the world and of every religion and non-religion. This is a glimpse into our corner of the world’s holiday cheer which consists of really bizarre family traditions like dressing up the CSP spokescats in t-shirts, taking your sister’s plastic dinosaur and placing it in the tree with a crown on its head while it simultaneously eats a reindeer and plays the saxophone, and feeding a healthy dose of eggnog to your nutcrackers. Happy holidays, ya’ll and yinz guys. ;)