Category Archives: weddings

Emily and Andrew’s Suburban Chicago Wedding

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Yesterday was Emily and Andrew’s wedding day. It was a small wedding. It was so small that I’ve actually had some bridal parties with more people than everybody in attendance at Emily and Andrew’s wedding. Despite the small size, about 30 people, it was one of the most romantic weddings I’ve seen. To me what mad the gathering special were the people. We got to know everybody there and everybody was special to the bridal couple.

I think this is just about everybody except me and Cory.
Emily and Andrew's picture exiting the Chicago church after their wedding

The reception was at Andrew’s Mother’s house. Here is the dining room all set for dinner.
Emily and Andrew's reception photo

We did get away to a little park for a couple of minutes.
Photograph of Emily and Andrew in a Chicago Park after their wedding ceremony
Photograph of Emily and Andrew in a Chicago Park after their wedding ceremony

Allison and Brian’s Alsip Wedding

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Another great wedding, this time for Allison and Brian. The weather cooperated and we had one of those great days. Cory, the summer intern I hired from Bradley, joined me at the wedding. I surprised her by letting her shoot some photos at the reception with a backup camera. Cory was surprised at how difficult it is to take photos in a dark reception hall. I think it gave her a new appreciation for what I do. I’m too tired to post any more, so good night!

Allison's bridal photo taken in Chicago
Allison and Brian's wedding photograph in front of a Chicago area church.
Allison and Brian's wedding photograph at a Chicago area park.

Joan and Max’s Schaumburg Wedding

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Yesterday was Joan and Max’s wedding. They joined about 1300 Chicago area couples by getting married on 7/7/7. We spent the day at The Seville, on Barrington road. The Seville hosted two weddings in the afternoon and three in the evening. I bet the staff at the Seville was exhausted by day’s end.

Purple and Lilacs were the theme of the day
Reception Photo taken at the Seville

Schaumburg Illinois wedding photograph taken at the Seville.

Reception Photo of Max and Joan taken at the Seville

These chocolate covered strawberries were in the bride’s room at the Seville.
One of the Seville's famous wedding reception deserts.

The sweet table at The Seville
Photo of the desert table at Joan and Max's wedding reception at the Seville.

Megan and Lance

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Megan and Lance had a great wedding today at Starved Rock. Here are some of my favs from the day.

Megan peering into her reception room at Starved Rock Lodge
Here’s Megan checking out the dinning room.
Megan having a whimsical moment at her Starved Rock Wedding.
Megan in her infamous pose!
Wedding Photograph of Megan and Lance at Starved Rock Lodge
Our couple is a tender moment!
Groomsman photo at Starved Rock
The guys!
A Starved Rock Sunset wedding portrait
It was a great sunset. Take a look at the fire in the sky!
Starved Rock room dancing reception photograph
This is what happens at the end of the night when a group of dancers gets together.

June 2007: Catching Up

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As some of you folks are aware, I fell way behind. No matter how hard I worked, I just could not seem to catch up. I finally decided to farm all of the kids out and devote a full work week to catching up. As my previous post mentioned I’ve finally had some time to breathe.

I realize that since I did not have a chance to blog while I was catching up (and honestly I didn’t think I should be blogging when there was tons of work to do), there are several recent events and photo sessions which I did not have a chance to feature. So here are some photos from recent events.

From Brad and Catherine’s Reception. Brad and Catherine had a destination wedding with a small local reception at Pheasant Run. It was a nice intimate affair with just close friends and family celebrating with them.

Catherine and Brad's reception photo taken at Pheasant Run Resort

Next was Brad and Kristin’s wedding. We had a great day. It was absolutely beautiful. Kristin wanted some unique photos so we went to the Schaumburg sculpture garden. Here is a composite image I created just for them!

Kriten and Brad's wedding photo taken in Schaumburg

A great big welcome to Brady. The proud parents are Kevin and Kelly!
Personal Photograph of the kids

Another great wedding day. This time it was Amy and Randy. I don’t think I will ever forget the snack stop we made at all places, Home Depot!
Groom relaxes after the wedding ceremony

But later on after Randy had his snack he did have time for a romantic moment.
Amy and Randy's wedding day photo taken at the Doubletree in Lombard Illinois

Finally, we have Christie and Brian’s wedding from a week or so ago. I guess I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had great weather and great clients this year.
Bridal photo of Kristie on her wedding day

Almost Packed

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I’m so sore and achy my aches have pains. We’ve spent the last three days furiously packing the basement to get ready for the demolition and renovation project to begin. Well all of that starts this week. It amazes me how much junk we’ve accumulated over the last ten years. We have a big dumpster sitting in our driveway that is more than half filled with our useless junk. There is still some more to go but right now I just can’t move another box! So for the next several months we’re going to be living in half the space we’ve become accustomed to.

Another milestone was reached over the last week. My birthday. Let’s just say that while I’m not quite old enough to remember when the Dead Sea was only sick, I’m getting old enough to remember when people were still mourning. We had a fairly low key celebration for my birthday. We thought we would try to go out for dinner but the kids did not cooperate. So instead we brought Pizzaria Uno in for a treat. Sheryl went to the store and bought a small cake. All in all a pretty quiet day.

Over that weekend, I shot Laura and Brian’s wedding. I’m still working on the photos so when I have a moment, I’ll post a few. In the meantime, I did finish the first draft of Jennifer and John’s wedding album. As always, you can view current and past albums on my website. Jennifer and John’s album can be viewed by clicking the link.

Testimonial

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I’ve just received a request from Professional Photographers of America to provide a testimonial regarding how being a Certified Professional Wedding Photographer has assisted me when consulting with prospective clients. I know from talking to a couple of my clients, that they’ve booked me rather than another photographer because I was a CPP Weddings and they were not. While the client did not know exactly what being certified meant or involved, they did know it meant something. So stay tuned to see where my testimonial will appear.

When talking to wedding photographers, one of the hardest tasks we have is to stay creative. That is finding new and different ways to photograph the different wedding items. Every so often, a topic will appear on a forum saying “show me your dodad photos” The intent is to get new ideas. Well at Jennifer and Johns wedding, a week or so ago, we were at the church. Upon the altar was a crown of thorns put there fore the season of Lent. Inspiration hit:
Photo of wedding bands on a thorn
During the wedding ceremony, the Monsenior talked about the rings, the crown of thorns and marriage.

Meanwhile, back at the studio, I’ve been furiously working to catch up on my album back log. Here is one of the spreads from Courtney and Jim’s wedding album.
Collage of wedding photos as seen in the album
As a reminder, most of the albums under construction and many of the previously completed wedding albums can be viewed via my website.

Melissa and Dan’s Wedding Album

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I have just completed the initial design for Melissa’s and Dan’s album. I thought I might try something a little different. Rather than show you some my favorite album spreads from their book, I thought I would try a complete album show.

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Were you able to view the show. Pretty neat, being able to put a slide show into a blog entry.

Back to Work

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The Thanksgiving weekend is over and it is time to get back to work. As many of you know, I’ve fallen a little behind with my album design. There have been two reasons for this. First is the birth of my son, Michah. Babies do take up a lot of your time and it seems that even when he’s sleeping, either he needs attention or I’m trying to keep the other two from waking him up.

The other reason for the backlog has been the change over from waiting for client to select their favorites and then designing the album to designing the album and then having the clients modify the rough draft. When I made this change over, I forgot to factor in album designs from last year where the clients provided me with a list of their favorites. Therefore, I seem to have twice as many albums to design as I expected this time of year. However, now that wedding season is over, I can give these albums my full attention (or as full as I can with a house full of kids) and catch up.

Here are three spreads from Heather and Ryan’s albums which I particularly like.

Wedding Photo collage for Heather and Ryan's Wedding Album

Collage of wedding photos as seen in the album

Collage of wedding photgraphs as seen in the wedding album