Just a day after documenting their wedding day, Laura, Michael, Jared (thanks for all your help!), and I trekked down to the beaches of Santa Barbara for their Trash The Dress (TTD) shoot.

They were such troopers for braving the water and more so willing to literally trash their wedding attire (although Michael kinda cheated and wore one of his other suits :P while Laura drenched her beautiful dress!). Jared helped me record some behind-the-scene video clips of what we were up to.

Please check out some of my favorites from our hour-long shoot. It’s Friday afternoon, April 30th, which means it’s time to get one of these. 3G here I come!

Ladies and gents. Welcome to the amazingly creative and imaginative world of Gamie’s mind, better known to some as Peach Mailbox. She pitched out this idea of doing two different inspirational photo shoot scenes to me a few weeks ago, one involving hitting a cupcake pinata and the other smashing each other’s face with a cupcake. And if you know Gamie, she’s like the queen of cupcakes :). And I love the name she gave this shoot: the C4 Theme, for color, contrast, candies, and cards!

I’ll let Gamie explain the details on her own blog. In the mean time, please check out the photos of this inspirational photo shoot below. Special thanks to Nancy Pantsy for modeling and of course Gamie for putting together a funstastic idea.

Model: Nancy Kwong

Make-up and hair: Chiali Meng Wedding Makeup

Everything else: Peach Mailbox

First scene:

Second scene:

A few months ago, my good wedding photographer friend Gavin Wade and I were talking about how much fun it would be if we could convince a bride and groom to get back into their wedding attire and do a photo shoot. At the same time, we wanted to work with other wedding vendors that would be interested in the shoot; in return, we would give them the images for their portfolio and media usage as a token of appreciation for their help. Sounded like a win-win-win situation to us :).

So the scene was set last Friday; the bride and groom were one of my favorite 2009 couples Gabriela and Scott; the venue was the modern, stylish, and classy AVIA Hotel in Downtown Long Beach; make-up and hair were by Muse Make-up Artistry; lastly, the bouquet and boutonniere were designed by Bella Fiore. We wanted to re-enact certain parts of the wedding day, such as the getting ready for the bride and groom and the portraits. Our goal was to depict what it would be like for an engaged couple to have their wedding at AVIA Hotel.

Thanks again to all the amazing vendors that helped out, especially Melissa and Rafael at AVIA; Margaret, Christina, and Sarah of Muse Make-up Artistry, and Deanne Ragusa of Bella Fiore. I really hope this type of project becomes a periodic thing. If there are other brides and grooms interested in getting back in your dress and suit/tux, please let me know. Here’s some of my favorites from the photo shoot, enjoy! Be sure to check out Gavin’s blog in the near future for his photos on this shoot.

…just because she’s simply awesome :). Special thanks to Keemia for the dresses and Chiali for the hair and make-up.