We started the day at Julie’s parent’s house, taking photos of the dress and other details, before Julie arrived from the hair salon to get into her wedding dress. Julie was an absolutely stunning bride and her dress had beautiful and ornate decorative stitching throughout, which looked really cool.

Jake and Julie’s wedding was at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in downtown Calgary in a ceremony with smiles and happy tears. After the ceremony and family photos, we went to the high school where Julie and Jake first met, on the south side of Calgary, to start their portrait time and then we drove up to Inglewood to finish the portraits there.

The reception was held at Commonwealth Hall in the north east of Calgary and the decor for the reception was amazing. There was a huge tent set up in the main hall area with bright-coloured up-lights along the floor and a chandelier hanging from the centre of the tent. And check out the cake! That is such an amazingly stylish cake!

Julie and Jake had a game of tossing a big dice to see if they would kiss or whether some other fun event would take place. Each side had a different outcome, but it seemed to land on the kissing side quite a lot.

The reception was a really cool party, with belly dancers who performed and kicked off the dancing. I love it when everyone gets out on the dance floor! Before we left we did some more portraits, because it makes for a great way to wrap up the story of their day together. Here are (quite) a few of my favourites:

We started their family photography out in Fish Creek park in Calgary, which is where we went for their first portrait session, though this time we used different spots. It’s a great place for photos, with wide fields for the dogs to run around in and a little stream running through not far from where you can park your car. After this we went back to their home and photographed in Ryder’s room. I love the bright colours they’ve chosen for his room!

Here is a small selection of my favourite images from their photo session:

We photographed Corey and Krista’s wedding back in 2008 and their engagement session in 2007, before this blog was even born. I did the portrait session with Corey, Krista and Conner in their house in Calgary, which has lots of nice big windows to let in the sunlight. Some babies will let you put them into certain poses while they sleep, with their head resting in their hands and that kind of thing, but Conner was determined to sleep in his own positions! Lol! I actually much prefer these shots, because they have so much personality to them. And he may have a modelling career ahead of him, with those Blue Steel expressions.

We started our day with some photos of Renee getting ready in the hair salon, just like I would for a wedding. Renee had a very cool birdcage veil that looked awesome with her dress. Guannan had asked for some photos with his car, so we did those as soon as everyone was ready, because the weather looked a bit iffy and I didn’t want the car to get rained on or muddy—it was so shiny! The sky was very overcast, so I went with it and created dramatic-looking images with the dark clouds.

Since stylish imagery was a big priority for Guannan and Renee, we mainly did posed photos, so this blog post is almost like a Unique Images Photography guide to posing couples! The goals for our session, apart from getting great images, were that the photos have a stylish and somewhat romantic feel, that the time be relaxing and not rushed, and that the photos show off the Banff area.

Thanks to Guannan and Renee for being such a wonderful and hospitable couple!

This was a very relaxing and enjoyable engagement session. We basically went for a walk along the river bottom in Lethbridge and whenever I saw something that looked like it would make for a good place for photos we stopped and hung around there for a while and then ambled off somewhere else. It was pretty loose and ad-libbed. And the light was so nice, too!

Here are some of my favourite images from their session. I look forward to photographing their wedding, which is very, very soon! Oh, and don’t worry Jamie, I’d never, ever mention that mysterious wet patch on your pants.

Ryan and Shawna actually live in Edmonton, but we did their engagement session in Calgary. Like some of our other couples, their wedding will be in a beautiful outdoor location—in this case, Summerhill Winery in Kelowna—and so they wanted a contrasting urban setting for their engagement photos. We spent the afternoon visiting several locations around Calgary, including the Calgary Zoo (where they got to pat a python), some abandoned railway tracks (I don’t photograph on live tracks), and a couple of other places round the city.

Shawna asked me to get a photo of her engagement ring during their session. Her ring is a unique, custom-made design and it looks very cool! She said that she had tried to get photos herself, but they never turned out well. So hopefully I got something a bit better.

I’m really looking forward to this wedding! Not only are they a very cool couple to hang out with, but Kelowna is one of my favourite places to shoot weddings.

We started our day right before Rachel’s wedding dress went on. Rachel’s dress that had a large bow and little dots all over it—it was very cool and different. Their wedding ceremony—and the whole day, other than the getting ready—was at the Calgary Zoo. The Calgary Zoo is one of my favourite wedding venues in Calgary. For one thing, it is so different to your usual wedding venue. Plus, the zoo is huge and there are so many different locations just within the zoo itself. There are rainforest areas, outdoor trails—you name it! It’s a dream for a photographer. Their ceremony and reception were both held in the Safari Lodge, which has a great feel to it. Very exotic!

Both their ceremony and reception had many fun and touching moments. At one point during the reception, Rachel’s sisters sung her a comical, semi-biographical song that had everyone laughing. And check out their cake! Isn’t that the coolest cake, ever? We stayed for the beginning of the dancing and got photos of everyone out on the dance floor doing their thing and having fun.

Congrats, guys!

And the most important thing: a happy couple in love.

From my very first lengthy and chatty phone call with Ngan, in response to her enquiry email, I knew this was a wedding that I wanted to photograph. I book most of my couples without meeting up first and I’m used to getting right into the swing of things on the wedding day itself, so it’s such a good thing when you can click so well and have such a cool connection right away.

John and Ngan were married at the Juniper Hotel in Banff, which is a stylish, modern-rustic venue away from the main town. The place has an eco-friendly focus and is entirely wind-powered, which is pretty cool. Ngan and John were ably assisted in many things throughout their day by wedding planner Sonia and her assistant from Cornerstone Events. They did a fantastically amazing job and I highly recommend them.

The first event of the day was John and Ngan’s Vietnamese tea ceremony. We’ve photographed a number of Asian tea ceremonies (Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, etc.) and they have to be some of the most challenging things we photograph. So much happens so fast! And it’s all important! Lol! If you’ve never seen one, imagine a western ceremony where the first kiss happens in the blink of an eye every few seconds for half an hour and that will give you some idea of the timing of it all. Of course, there aren’t actual kisses happening constantly in the tea ceremony; they exchange gifts and greetings and have other traditions.

At the end of their tea ceremony they had a surprise for their guests: traditional dragon dancers! That was so cool! There were eight of them and there was so much sound, colour and energy in the dancing! Then John and Ngan snuck off with us for some quick portraits in their traditional Vietnamese dress.

Their western wedding ceremony was outside on the Juniper’s terrace area and, although the weather had been threatening snow, the sun popped out just for their wedding. After that we visited a few locations around Banff for their portraits. They were so easy to take photos of. In fact, their whole wedding party was very easy-going. And John has to be one of the smiliest grooms we’ve ever seen! He basically didn’t stop smiling all day!

Their reception was full of laughs and there was a touching moment when Ngan gave a speech to her family in Vietnamese. I have no idea what she said, but there was so much emotion in the room that I nearly cried, too!

Thanks for having us at your wedding. Here are some of your photos.

Thanks for being so fun and up for anything!