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Dan and Cait and I got together the day after their wedding for this romantic fashion session—or ‘trash the dress’, as it is popularly known, though I much prefer my name for it. Plus, Caitlin would have been understandably reluctant to actually trash her rather nice Lazaro wedding gown. It was good to see them again and we were able to relax and create some portraits without the rush of the wedding day.

We shot mostly around the Liberty Grand again, using some locations that we weren’t able to get to on their wedding day due to weather and a tight wedding schedule. Right near the Liberty is a really cool historic house with a beautiful garden. I love the first few images from there—with the dappled sunlight streaming through the tree branches it just looks so summer-y and secluded, like we were on a farm somewhere. And check out the last photo of Dan with the Toronto skyline—it looks like a Batman poster!

Congrats to Dan and Caitlin who were recently married at Toronto’s Liberty Grand, in a day filled with laughter and tears. If you are a regular blog reader you may recognise Caitlin and Dan from a bridal fashion shoot I did last summer in Kelowna. A lot of people thought that they were models I had hired to act the part of a couple when in fact they are actually a real-life couple and were engaged at that time.

This was such a cool wedding in so many ways! The entire day was based in the Liberty Grand complex, which is a really beautiful wedding and event venue down near the waterfront in Toronto. The combination of the bright colours of the cherry blossom theme for the wedding and the Liberty’s own classic elegance gave a great look, both timelessly classy and fun as well.

Caitlin was such a stunning bride! And her Lazaro dress and ornate veil were amazing also. The guys were a lot of fun to photograph, with Dan and the groomsmen all joking around. There was also a very touching moment when Dan received a special gift and card from Caitlin.

Their ceremony was held in the dome area of the Liberty Grand, which is a very beautiful room and they augmented it with cherry blossom decorations. After the ceremony I had only a few minutes to do all of the portraits and I took most of Dan and Caitlin’s portraits in literally two minutes! But that’s ok; it doesn’t take long to capture some great moments when a couple are really in love.

The reception was in the Liberty’s Renaissance ballroom and so much care had been taken to ensure a good time for everyone—they even had chefs cooking your food as you chose it! After the speeches everyone got out onto the dance floor and I love it when people get into the dancing! Caitlin’s bridesmaids are all professional dancers—Caitlin was actually in the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympic Games—and as well as the bridesmaids there were tons of people out on the dance floor giving it everything they had. As the dancing continued, Valerie Stanois, an amazing singer from hit Broadway musicals such as We Will Rock You, sang live for Caitlin and Dan while they danced and did the bouquet and garter tosses. She was accompanied by the lead from the current Dirty Dancing musical and as a duo they totally rocked the place.

So, thanks for having me along, Dan and Cait! All the best to you both!

Click on the play button below to see a slideshow of some highlights of the wedding day.

This is just a quick post before I blog a wedding later today to say that the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers spring contest results came in this morning and I got third overall – yay! My images placed in several categories there and the overall placing reflects a total score. The entries and standard of photography there is absolutely incredible and I feel very privileged to have placed so well. That said, I plan to pull out all the stops and completely kick butt next time!

Happy New Year!

Thanks to all our clients from 2009! I have put together a very quick little slideshow of some of my favourite wedding and bridal session images of 2009. I tried to keep it down to only three images per wedding—which was really hard!—but this is meant to be just a glimpse. More images from each wedding can be found on the blog under the weddings category. The one exception is the very last set of wedding photos, because this is a recent wedding that I haven’t even blogged yet, so I thought I’d give them a few more photos in the slideshow. I’ll be blogging the whole wedding soon.

There are three photos from Jessica and three from James Day and the rest are from me. I also need to thank Sherri, Trent, and Doug for assisting and shooting with me this year as well; their help was invaluable to me. There are a lot of portraits in this mix, because I put so much work into them that it’s hard to not choose them as my favourites. And there aren’t really any detail photos in here, either, because this is all about the people!

Click on the play arrow below to start the slideshow. Have a great 2010.

Bride.ca has just released the Honourable Mentions of their 2009 contest and we placed there, too. In fact, out of the 35 images six of them are ours! Yay us!

Since I didn’t submit any of our photos myself, it is interesting to see the images of ours that their judges chose. A big criteria for them was whether or not an image looked like it was distinctly wedding-y.

Their website says: “What we ultimately looked for was . . . is this a great photo or a great wedding photo? Unfortunately this meant that some incredible photographs did not make the cut, because they could have been anywhere, not necessarily at a wedding.”

This is kind of funny for me to read—and I don’t mean that sarcastically!—because I often deliberately distance myself from creating images that look wedding-y. This is especially true with the more fashion-based ideas that I come up with. I sometimes get inspiration from music photography and movie posters and I try to create a similar sort of commercial or cinematic vibe to my wedding photography—something that looks larger than life and out of the ordinary.

Anyways, I thought I’d comment on the images they chose to give a bit of a story behind each photo. So, for the first time on the blog I present to you: Captions!

This image was tricky to capture! It was taken on a small yacht on Okanagan Lake in Kelowna and the poor girl was sea-sick from the rocking of the boat. I was crouched up the very front of the boat holding a flash in one hand and my camera in the other, trying to frame the shot without getting any clutter in the background, or going blind from having the sun in the viewfinder, or falling over the side. I have two images of this setup and this is one of them. It pays to get it right the first time.

Kevin and Jen are a wonderful couple who are just so positive and in love. They were married in Coaldale in a moving ceremony with lots of tears, smiles and laughs. We did the main portraits at a canola field in Lethbridge that I happened to drive past a few days before the ceremony and thought would make for a nice location. Don’t you love how the yellow of the flowers and the blue of the sky goes so well together? I love colour.

We also did some quick photos in the Henotic restaurant in Lethbridge and nearby there, too.

These guys could hardly keep their hands off each other and it was really sweet. They were so obviously in love. We have so many images of them laughing, smiling, and just gazing into each others’ eyes. I love it when we have couples like that! It makes it so easy to get wonderful moments of them together. We were only with them for their ceremony and then their wedding portraits afterward, but I wish we’d had more time, just to hang out and get those moments that were happening so naturally and spontaneously.

All the best, guys.

We first met Brad and Ashley when we did their engagement session here in Lethbridge last fall. They are a fun couple and we flew through their session, getting some great photos with lovely fall colours. Although Brad and Ashley live in Airdrie, near Calgary, their wedding was down in Coaldale, next door to Lethbridge. Ashley asked for us to take photos at the river bottom, so we took them to a place near the Helen Schuler Coulee Centre. It’s a really nice location down there, though we hardly ever go there for our wedding photos. I think we only went there once all last year! But it was really lush and green and, although the clouds looked threatening later in the day, we escaped getting rained on.

We took some photos of the girls before the ceremony, then headed off to the church before coming back to Lethbridge for more photo time. I loved the huge stained glass windows in the Coaldale church. It was like photographing inside a big tie-dye shirt. Lol! Their reception was at the Lethbridge University and we finished our photo time there, though we weren’t at the reception itself and got to go home early for a change.

Here are some of their images.