With love, sensuality and spring running through the air, it was the ideal week to visit The San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market with Destinee and Seth for a Madly in Love Portrait Session. Madly in Love portrait session are totally unique to each couple and it was Seth and Destinee’s shared love of great San Francisco food and style that decided the Ferry Building and Hotel Vitale.  It is always an honor to capture people in Love and particularly a couple that so radiantly and intentionally prioritizes pleasure and truth.  As you enjoy, I hope you are blown open to love as the cherry trees are by the Springtime.

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in Love,

What we have discovered is one of the biggest mistakes a bride can make in planning her wedding day is to over emphasize the timing of her day and put little or no attention on what she actually wants the experience of the day to be; moment by moment, location by location, interaction by interaction.

What I see again and again is most of the attention placed on an efficiently scheduled timeline. This typically goes one of a few different ways. Assuming everything runs on schedule – “we’re good” and that is where the couple’s attention is – on everything running on schedule.

AND if, for example, the limo is caught in traffic or the maid of honor’s hair takes 10 minutes longer to finish, then typically some level of stress ensues and concern.

Either way the majority of attention is on the practical details of the day and little emphasis is on the experience itself.

You may be thinking “What are you talking about? We need a schedule to keep everything moving – guests, wedding party, us, vendors?” And you DO want to have a well-crafted schedule. However, once you have created it and confirmed that there is ample time for everything, trust that you have hired a team to support you in keeping on schedule and allow your attention to be on the experience you want to have.

Here’s what I recommend – consider all the different aspects of your day from the moment you wake up to the moment you close your eyes a married couple; from the interactions you have with one another to the interactions you have with your second cousin twice removed and imagine the best possible outcome – REALLY the BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME and plan for that.

What if your schedule included ample time for everyone to get their hair done and a desire that the time when you are getting ready was centering and enlivening? Or if you included not only a moment for mom to put on your veil but also a plan for every interaction with your mom to be joyful and loving? And what if you planned for 30 minutes to take portraits with your wedding party and planned for those 30 minutes to be fun and filled with beauty? These are just a couple of examples, your desires will be unique to you and they are easy to discover.

Next time you have 30 minutes set aside to plan your wedding day, grab a pen and paper and find a peaceful place to sit quietly and envision your wedding day; moment by moment, interaction by interaction. As you imagine the BEST POSSIBLE wedding day experience, take a few notes, record one word or one feeling or a short description of each moment. Allow yourself to imagine it all and actually plan to have the experience you want. Share it with the people you think can contribute and let the JOY begin.

Want more tips? Leave a note below telling us what you want to learn about.

in Love,

This month, I talked with one of my favorite women in the business of Giving Brides the Best Possible Wedding Day Experience, Sarah Jenks of The Breathtaking Bride. Sarah Jenks is a name synonymous with having not only the best possible wedding day but the most pleasurable engagement possible and pleasure is a topic I hold close to my heart.

A little background about Sarah – after years of struggling with overeating and weight loss/weight gain, Sarah decided to get off the roller coaster and understand not only the how to eat well but the why am I eating this way to begin with. Her question led her down a path of self-discovery, spiritual awareness and a new love for her body. It was the morning after she became engaged that she discovered her real purpose. After the initial shock and awe of being engaged to the man of her dreams began to soften her first thought was  “Am I thin enough to get married?” What a surprise after all these years of feeling so right with herself to suddenly be pulled back into the conversation of not being enough. She realized in that moment the extraordinary cultural paradigm engaged woman are dealing with and decided to do something about it – thus was born The Breathtaking Bride.

Sarah is embarking on an experience with a select group of brides in the coming weeks – It’s called the Breathtaking Bride Booty Camp and I will be joining Sarah and a select group of lucky ladies as an expert on having authentically beautiful wedding photos. Sign up for this program now!

Sarah and I sat down and talked for a couple hours about everything from her recent wedding this past summer, her big move to San Francisco and her belief that the only way to lose weight and have a successful engagement is to create a life full of romance, play and joie de vivre. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that diet plan? I know I want to.

Without further ado, tips from the radiant Sarah Jenks of Breathtaking Bride -

USE YOUR ENGAGEMENT AS A OPPORTUNITY TO DRAW YOUR SHARED ROAD MAP

Brides often come to me with a desire to change something about the way they look because they are feeling unhappy and think that losing weight is the answer. Once we start to open up their feelings and ideas, we will discover that behind their discomfort with their body image is something else – some aspect of their relationship that they are unhappy with.

We think that once we are engaged we have it figured out, something like “I’ve been working my whole life to find the man of my dreams, now I found him and he’s locked in, we’re locked in” But actually the engagement is the beginning not the end.

It’s important to put attention on your passion, on your intimacy, on your intellectual conversations, have  conversations about spirituality and your dreams in life – where you want to travelto  and when you want to retire and what do you want your marriage to look like. How do you want to feel when you come home at the end of the day from work, where you want to be when you’re 45 or 55 or 65? Talk about how your marriage is going to be similar to and different from your parents, from your friends. Talk about all of it, the whole thing. So I think that is the biggest tip.

Recently a client came to me distressed. She was gaining weight after her engagement and wanted to be losing weight. We spent weeks trying to understand what was going on. We started to dig into what thoughts, concerns, fears she was having and what she discovered was a fear that after she was married, she would start to become a mother to her man instead of a wife, like she saw with her own parents. She discovered a false belief that after her wedding she would be responsible for all the cooking and cleaning and nurturing her husband and she would gain weight. She was really very in-love, but had never shared her fear with her fiancé. Together, we talked about the kind of marriage she wanted to create and how she could start creating that now with sexy and fun date nights. After weeks of seeing no results, she lost 10 pounds in two weeks! She had been so distracted by her future version of herself looking fat, she hadn’t thought much about what she really wanted.

When we were done with our work, when she got married the thought how am I going to look didn’t even cross her mind. She went from feeling shy and self-conscious to walking the aisle feeling fabulous and her attention on the amazing man was waiting for her at the end. It was a hugely successful transformation.

TAKE TIME OFF FROM PLANNING YOUR WEDDING AND PUT TIME INTO SHARING PLEASURE WITH YOUR MAN

Often times when women become engaged, their lives suddenly become work and wedding, period. I just got married in June, so, I’m fresh off the boat with this and got into a cycle of working and not planning my wedding or planning my wedding and not working.  Taking time for myself was not a priority and because I didn’t make it one, it didn’t happen. When I did take time off I felt guilty, thinking “oh, my mom is working so hard or I really should be doing this and shouldn’t I be enjoying this, like isn’t this my wedding, like isn’t this suppose to be fun?”

I realized that my mom was choosing to because she was deriving pleasure from it. I accepted that this is a gift from her and I could find pleasure in receiving it.

Once I got that I was able to turn my attention to having fun with my man. We planned date nights and weekend get-aways where planning our wedding was off limits.

Now, I suggest all my brides go on a weekend trip with your fiancée and don’t talk about the wedding; get back massages, go for walks and take baths, hang out with your girlfriends. Make pleasure a priority in your life, in your planning and trust that taking time off will contribute to the pleasure of planning your wedding and having the wedding experience of your dreams come true!

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in Love,

One regret, dear world,
That I am determined
not to have

When I am
lying on my deathbed

Is that
I did not
kiss you enough.

When we first met to talk about their wedding in October, it took everything I had to stay on track and not get swept up into their palpable love and excitement. However, it was not until our Madly in Love portrait session in Golden Gate Park last weekend that I got to witness their awesome physical chemistry. One regret, dear world that these two lovers will not have on their death bed is that they did not kiss enough. Enjoy!!

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in Love,

Starting the year with Moniece and Alex’s wedding was like starting a year long dessert bar with… well, dessert. Each time Moniece looked at me and smiled joy erupted through me. I said ” I can’t help but smile every time you smile at me.” She said, “I can’t help but smile every time YOU look at me!” Double JOYBOMB and the perfect recipe for authentically beautiful portraits. Moniece’s ability to fully feel and respond to my joy and excitement for her, for her day, for her love and commitment to Alex is no surprise, Moniece is self aware and authentically tuned into her feeling.

In the moments before the ceremony, before Moniece had seen Alex, Moniece said she was feeling something unlike anything she had felt before, when I asked her to tell me more because I’m always fascinated about people’s unique experiences particularly when they are about to embark on a major life event, she said “it was impossible to describe, a combination of excitement and fear and love.” It gives me goosebumps to think about it. I hope these photos bring you a feeling of excitement and love and maybe a few goosebumps. ENJOY!

Makeup: BellaMina
Catering: Carrie Dove Catering

Getting Ready Accommodations: Hyatt Regency Embarcadero

Reception Venue: Bentley Reserve
Ceremony Venue: First Unitarian Universalist Church

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in Love,

It was no different in the case of Michael and Jena. If you had headphones plugged into my mind as I drove over to Chrissy Field to meet them on a crisp late December afternoon, you would have thought I was talking myself off a cliff.

Although I have a decade of experience capturing portraits and am prepared to handle whatever lighting and location conditions we discover in addition to plenty of experience eliciting joy, passion, love and play, I still feel nervous, almost terrified. For years, I tried to talk myself out of the fear, avoid it or pretend it wasn’t there (with little luck). Now, I have come to learn that the fear is as important an ingredient in capturing successfully creative images as my Nikon. The heart thumping uncertainty is actually the uncertainty of exactly how the creative force of the universe will be expressed through me, my clients and my camera today. We simply don’t know! In that not knowing, something new and unexpected is always born.

Capturing the chemistry of these two extraordinary individuals together was an honor, a heart racing one at that! The results speak for themselves. ENJOY!

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in LOVE,

For every wildly happy portrait I’ve taken of a child or a baby or a toddler, I’ve experienced as many moments of tone-defying screams and big wide mouthed tears and then almost like magic within moments they are laughing and delighted.

Recently, I had the pleasure of photographing the Lombard Family. I captured Tom and Jenn’s wedding in 2008 and it is always a treat to work with a couple again once they have a child. Our photo shoot was scheduled for a gorgeous early November afternoon and when we arrived, Ella was lethargic and upset and mostly just wanted to be tucked into mom’s lap as deeply as possible. We took a few photos and they looked mostly like this -

Tom and Jenn assured me that Ella was typically a really happy child and this was highly unusual for her. We decided to reschedule for a couple weeks out and give it another go. GREAT MOVE! Happy child is right, possibly the happiest I have seen (notice in the first shot – the crowd gathered around to witness Ella’s joy – seriously!!)

It was a few years ago, I started to wonder – “What is their secret? How do children feel so much joy?” I think their secret is simple – by allowing the upset and painful feelings to be fully expressed they are fully able to experience the joy of being alive. I spent years trying to avoid pain and upset and disappointment and what I didn’t realize was the whole time I spent avoiding it, I was actually numbing my ability to feel joy and love and attraction. There was a “dull happiness” present and a belief that life was good and I was happy but had lost my connection to actually feeling it.

Things changed and here is how – I was going through a heartbreak and unwilling to acknowledge how let down I had been by the man. My mentor said “Oh yeah, you avoid disappointment.” and she was right on, I did, I was scared that the disappointment would be so great I would never return to joy. What I learned was exactly the opposite, the more willing I was to acknowledge and feel the disappointment, the more I was able to actually notice and fully experience the utter joy of my life and the briefer the experience of disappointment lasted. Now, I am able to change the aspects of my life that do not inherently brings me happiness, basically I tell the truth. And the truth sets me free.

Now when I smile for the camera it is radiant and real. It is a smile that says – LIFE IS GOOD! Many of us already are willing to “feel it all” and if you are, like me, scared that you will never recover from the let down, let me tell you – YOU WILL and I invite you to take on being willing to feel it all!

in LOVE,

We are off to Hawaii and will see YOU in 2012,

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Love,

We were inspired by each other. Prior to his proposal, Matt and I had never talked about what we each envisioned for our wedding, so after he proposed (and after we’d spent a few months just floating in our state of engagement), we wrote letters to each other, putting on paper our dreams, inclinations and hopes for the day. These letters served a saving grace throughout the planning process. Whenever we were overwhelmed or uncertain about a decision, we’d find inspiration and answers by going back to what we’d put in writing oh so many months prior.

Wherever you are in the planning process, I invite you to invest some time and attention, following Clare and Matt’s lead in putting on paper your dreams, inclinations and hopes for the day. Use it as a valuable touchstone throughout your wedding planning. This can be one of the most cherished experiences of your wedding planning!

Click here to see the result of Clare and Matt’s efforts.

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