One of our favorite things to do after a wedding is a Trash The Dress session (or a Day After session). We have several scheduled for this year (mostly for destination weddings) so we thought we would share a few thoughts about why you should add a Day After/Trash The Dress session to your photography package!

More Relaxed Setting
The wedding day is usually pretty hectic and includes a tight schedule. Most couples schedule some time between the ceremony and reception to do some photos, but more often than not it’s not enough time. Besides, it’s tough to concentrate on photos when you’re ready to party! A day-after session is a great chance to take pictures in a more relaxed setting without all the hustle and bustle.

A Chance to Get Creative
Let’s face it, most brides are concerned about getting that white wedding dress dirty on the wedding day. But you’re going spend a ton of money to get it cleaned anyways, so why not try something fun and creative by doing a day-after photo session. The phrase “Trash the Dress” gets thrown out there a lot, but it doesn’t actually mean you have to destroy your wedding dress. A “Trash the Dress” or “Day After” session can be whatever you want, from going into a field to finding some cool urban settings.

Show Your Personality
You’ve got that amazing dress, why not show it off! And a great way to do that is use some of your favorite accessories. Have a hot pair of shoes? Wear them with your wedding dress. Have some cool jewelry pieces? Perfect! A Day-After session will let your personality shine. One of my favorite examples is one of our brides who’s a total cowgirl at heart. She wanted to take photos in her dress with her favorite pair of cowgirl boots, her cowgirl hat, and her awesome denim jacket. The photos were totally her style and personality and let her have a lot of fun with her wedding dress.

More photos from the 30th Annual Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) convention! This time I have photos to share from a HOT photo shoot in the desert hosted by Scarlett Lillian!

It was really nice to get away from the craziness of the Las Vegas strip and shoot in the beautiful surrounding desert! The bus ride alone was so much fun and I got to meet some great photographers because of this workshop! In fact, our gorgeous models were Erin & Gavin Wade, a husband and wife photography team from California! Just as amazing in front of the camera as they are behind it!

I knew that my trip to Vegas would not be complete unless I did a shoot in the desert, so as soon as Scarlett’s workshop went live I was frantically trying to type in all the information to secure my spot! I thought it would sell out immediately, so my heart was racing! It did sell out fast, but my spot was safe! : )

It was so great meeting everyone who participated in the shoot and I want to thank Scarlett for organizing it and Erin & Gavin for bringing the hotness to these photos! Their love for each other and the beautiful location in which this entire shoot took place just made for the most romantic photos! I’m so excited to finally share them!

Ah… has it really been 7 days already that I’ve been in Vegas?!?! I’m sitting at the airport right now waiting to head back to the East Coast, thinking about the blur that has been the past week. Between all the workshops, shoots, trade show, chatting with people and dealing with a 3 hour time difference, I feel like I was hit by a truck that went in reverse and ran over me again! Whew!

I’m taking away a lot from WPPI, and one of those things is some fun Trash The Dress photos on the Las Vegas strip! This was part of a group shoot set up by Chicago photographer Melissa Diep. As you can imagine, trying to do a group photo shoot with over 40 photographers and 5 models on the busy sidewalks of the strip was a bit chaotic. But when we were able to take the models to the side streets and shoot we were able to get some fun images. Here are a few:

Wild horses, the ruins of a mansion, antique car skeletons, canopies of trees and moss, pristine beaches – there’s nothing about Cumberland Island that isn’t captivating. To add to the island’s mystique, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette had a very private wedding ceremony on the island. The wedding was photographed by the incomparable Denis Reggie, who spoke at our local PUG meeting last year!

It was the perfect location for Kaci’s Trash The Dress session! Kaci was one of our brides from 2008. She and Dusty had their wedding at Club Continental, and it’s still one of my favorite weddings ever! In fact, I have a 24×36 print on my wall from their wedding that might be replaced only by one of Kaci’s Trash The Dress photos from this weekend!

This shoot took a while to put together. Kaci first started told me about her cowgirl photo shoot idea last fall, but we couldn’t find the time to make it happen before the holidays. But she planted the idea in my head and a few weeks ago I had a random vision of Kaci on a beach with horses in the background, and I emailed her immediately about doing her photo session at Cumberland Island. Finally, after we had to reschedule twice, Kaci’s rockin’ Trash The Dress session took place yesterday!

And it was sooooo worth the wait! It was also worth the exhaustion and complete soreness from a photo shoot that required a commitment of 12 hours to shoot and miles and miles of walking. But we knew all that going in to the shoot, and everyone was committed to making it happen! Kaci brought Aunt Clara along and she helped so much with the shoot. Plus it’s always nice to see Aunt Clara!

Kaci is very natural in front of the camera, so we shot about as many images for this session as we would a wedding! We were just having a lot of fun and there were so many different locations to shoot that we couldn’t help ourselves! There were parts of the island that inspired a kind of fairytale look and other parts where we felt like we were shooting in Arizona. An interesting combination, for sure, but both really matched Kaci’s elegant dress and also her country style! It’s really hard to choose favorites and we even had to narrow it down from those, but here’s a peek at some of the ones that topped the list:

When someone recently asked about Trash The Dress sessions on a forum discussion, I was happy to share my opinion! We are big fans of the trend! It’s such a fun idea to get into the dress again after the wedding and do something creative with it!

The discussion led to a post on the My Photo Video blog and they included one of our images from the Key West Trash The Dress Session we shot with Maria & Peter. This session included some of the most stunning images we have ever captured and gave Maria & Peter some very unique, beautiful photos from their romantic getaway in Key West:

But not all Trash The Dress sessions require you to really “trash” your dress. We shot Beth & Mark’s Jacksonville Trash The Dress Session at one of North Florida’s historic locations. It was playful and romantic and some of the images are still among our favorites today:

And then, there are the unplanned Trash The Dress sessions! While shooting Deby & Michael’s Jacksonville Wedding last summer, they decided that the June heat was a little too much… so they jumped in the pool! Imagine Matt & I running over to the pool with my jaw dropped on the ground in shock! This is definitely a wedding memory they won’t forget:

If you are thinking about doing a Trash The Dress session, think about some things that you like to do and see if that can be incorporated into the session. Or, go with a theme (like from your favorite movie). Also, keep an open mind. Places that look run down can make a surprisingly cool background. The possibilities are endless when it comes to “trashing” your dress! Make it your own!

Today, we were so excited to find out from one of our favorite couples, Beth & Mark, that their wedding photo was included in the latest issue of Jacksonville Magazine! Check it out:

The photo credit had a typo in my name (trust me, I realized in kindergarten how tough my name was to spell!) but they spelled the bride & groom’s names right, and that’s the important thing!

Beth & Mark had a very unique, beautiful wedding at the Jacksonville Zoo and we like to call them our “most photographed couple.” Check out their four, yes FOUR, photo sessions with us:

Engagement Photos at the Jacksonville Zoo

Engagement Photos in Destin

Wedding at the Jacksonville Zoo

Jacksonville Trash The Dress Photos

And just because they live in Italy now doesn’t mean there won’t be a fifth one. We’ve already looked into airfare!

It’s been an exciting year for Beth & Mark and we are so happy for them that it ends on such a high note! We are anxious to see what 2010 brings for this amazing couple! Hugs from home! : )

Wedding at the Jacksonville Zoo

As this year comes to a close, it’s only natural to reflect over the previous 12 months – the highs and the lows (hopefully more highs than lows), people you’ve met along the way, experiences that moved you, what you’ve learned, and moments that you will never forget. All this week, Matt & I have reflected on each of the engagements and weddings that we captured in 2009. We relived all of the laughs that we shared with our amazing couples and remembered the tears of joy that we’ve shed on the most important day of their lives. This year has been nothing short of amazing and we thought it would be fun to put together a collection of our favorite moments to share with all of you.

I imagine that the way we feel when we watch this video is much like the feeling our couples get when they watch the wedding slideshows that we create for them. With each frame, we are taken back to that particular moment in time. Is there anything more powerful? In fact, when Matt first sat down to watch the video I put together of all these memories, he got a little teary eyed. I have to admit that I do, too, when I watch this video.

We love sharing these memories with you, as so many of you have become our friends. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for your friendship and for allowing us to be such an importrant part of your lives. Here’s a glimpse of how each of you has helped make 2009 so very special for us:

We wish you all continued love and happiness in 2010!

And to our 2010 couples, we’re really looking forward to capturing your stories! Can you believe it? This time next year, we’ll be bragging about all of YOU!

All the best to you and your families this holiday season!

: ) Gwen & Matt

One of the highlights of this year’s PartnerCon was the addition of some shooting workshops with some of the top photographers in the country. I knew immediately that I HAD to be in the Sara France workshop because it was totally my cup of tea. At first, I ended up on the waiting list, but I remained hopeful that my name would come up on the final list. We were in St. Augustine on our way to an engagement session when I received the news that I got in, and you would have thought I won the lottery! I squealed and did a little happy dance right there in the passenger seat!

The photo shoot did NOT disappoint! First of all, Sara France was just really cool. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but she was really down to Earth. Second, the model (Dawn) was so gorgeous and really made everyone’s job so easy! She’s been modeling since she was a teen and made sure to give all 25 of us attention so we could get a shot!

We walked through the streets of New Orleans and Sara would stop when she saw a great location. She talked us through her thought process of using the light, background, what gear she would use and why, and how to talk to the model. It was a lot of fun and even though the shoot was supposed to be 2 hours Sara kept us out for an extra hour! I could barely walk by the end of it but it was so worth it! It was a great experience and the images are just killer! I can’t wait until next year’s PartnerCon, which is going to be in New Orleans again!!!! Yay!!

Thanks so much to Pictage for adding this amazing experience to the conference, to Sara France for leading this particular workshop, to the stylist and model for giving us an amazing visual to work with, and to the other photographers that I met in the group! I can’t wait to see everyone’s images! Here are a few of my favorites:

With all the cool weather we’ve been having in Florida lately I thought it was time to heat things up with a slideshow from Maria & Peter’s hot Trash The Dress session in Key West! Still one of our favorite sessions EVER! Beauty, romance, and a gorgeous tropical location – ingredients for a spicy photo shoot! We were so thrilled to share these beautiful photos with the readers of Truly Engaging and are so happy to share even MORE photos from this session with this slideshow!

Maria & Peter, thanks again for letting us be part of this! It was so much fun!! : )

Last night I had such a blast hanging out with other photographers during the Jax Shoot Club in downtown Jacksonville. We are so fortunate to have such a great network of photographers here who are supportive of one another and get along so well!

Thanks so much to Melanie at La Dolce Vita Studio and Kara at Kara Pennington Photography for organizing the shoot club! They not only brought all of us together but also coordinated all the models and everything for the shoot! Have to show love to some other people who supported the shoot:

Makeup and Hair was provided by Faythe Mesic: http://www.faythemesic.com
Bridal Bouquets were provided by Anything with Plants & Flowers: http://www.anythingwithplants.com
Lauren’s Dress and bridal attire was provided by Solutions Bridal of Gainesville: http://www.solutionsbridal.com/
Her dress was by designer Alvina Valenta (style #9700) and her veil was by Lori London (style #VM95)

And of course…. the models!
Julianne and Greg (engagement couple)
Kelly & Chris (bride and groom)
Lauren (solo bride)

I’ve been seeing some of the shots popping up on Facebook already and it’s amazing to see how everyone has such a different perspective of the same subject! And since there were 3 sets of models we broke up into group so each group’s session with the models was completely different. It’s always fun to get together with everyone (and I’ll get to see most of them again tomorrow at the PUG meeting! Yay!).

Here are my shots from the evening. I shot with available light only even though I had my flash and some other lighting equipment in my car. To be honest, I didn’t want to walk back to the car because I was having too much fun! At the end of the night some of us were still hanging around gabbing away and one of the couples decided to go into the fountain for a Trash The Dress session! It was just an amazing time!

Here are some of my faves:

Can’t wait to see everyone again next month!!