A Beautiful Park for a Walk

It's my first trip to Meridian/Boise, and I have to say I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen so far. Instead of crowded city streets where every house and business is competing for a postage stamp sized piece of land, things here seem to sprawl out with open space in between and gorgeous mountain ranges in the backdrop. What it lacks in "unique cityness" - old homes and buildings, hundreds of boutiquey shops, museums, science centers and democrats, it seems to make up in nature - golden fields, livestock, hiking, skiing, boating, ATVing, exploring, space to breathe. It's a different kind of city than I'm used to, but not bad different and I can see why city dwellers choose to relocate here.

This afternoon, we drove down to Eagle Island State Park so El could take some senior photos for her baby sitter. The park itself seems to be packed with potential - a water slide for the summer, horse trails, a frisbee golf course (though I've been advised it's not a good one - too much water) and plenty of trees and walking trails. I didn't see too much of it on foot since Will was my buddy for the afternoon, and he preferred a gravel induced bouncy jaunt around the horse trailer area, but what I saw was just lovely. When it hit magic hour, the sun lit up the trees like glowing fiery orbs and the sky looked too blue to be real. There were people riding horses, taking photos, walking with their dogs running off leash ahead of them, and others I'm sure enjoying more of the park that I didn't pass by.

Even though Will was feeling a little cranky, it was a beautiful, chilly afternoon and I'm sure that El got some beautiful photos with such an extraordinary landscape (and her baby sitter's adorable horse!) in the background.

Hawaii: A Recap

The whole trip I meant to post updates on what we were doing. Instead, I was so busy enjoying everything that I barely touched the computer. Now that I've been home for a few days, I've run out of excuses :)

For starters, we spent 7 days on Kauaii and it is possibly the most beautiful place I've ever seen. We went hiking, took a helicopter tour, spent every morning at the beach, went on a sunset dinner cruise and explored the island and all it had to offer. I would absolutely visit Kauaii again, the pace is so slow and relaxed and the people are warm and friendly. The food was also incredibly and every meal was book-ended by Pina Coladas and desert.

After Kauaii, we hopped to Oahu and spent 6 days at the Ko Olina Resort. It was a totally different experience than Kauaii, much closer to Los Angeles, but we still had a wonderful time. We also went hiking, visited Waikiki Beach, explored the north shore and went swimming with sea turtles at a local beach. The turtles were amazing, so social and friendly and they were absolutely the highlight of Oahu for me.

Hanalei Bay, my favorite beach on Kauai

E and I on Ke'e Beach

Ke'e Beach - the sand covering the roots has blown away

E watching a Ke'e Beach Sunset

Hiking to Hanakapi`ai Beach

Hiking to Hanakapi`ai Beach

E photographing the view while hiking to Hanakapi`ai Beach

The Na Pali Coast on our hike

Tiny stream on our Hanakapi`ai Beach hike

Awesome stone towers at Hanakapi`ai Beach

Poipu Beach

Could the Poipu Beach sunset be any more awesome?

Mango Pina Colada! Virgin of course :) I drank a lot of these

Red Dust Falls along Waimea Canyon

Waterfalls as seen from our helicopter tour

Na Pali coast from our helicopter

Hanalei Bay from our helicopter

Sunset behind Niihau from our Sunset Boat Cruise

Spouting Horn!

Sunset from Ko Olina

Rainbow over Pearl Harbor

USS Arizona Memorial

View from along the Diamond Head Crater hike

View from the top of the Diamond Head Crater hike

Ko Olina Resort sunset

Ko Olina Resort sunset

Alani Resort Sunset

Sea turtles! A group of 4 swam right next to me for over an hour

Gorgeous and friendly, I had no idea they were so social

Beautiful flowers all over the place, this one from Ko Olina

Flowers from Gaylord's Restaurant

Featured!

So, almost 6 months into our marriage, E and I still haven't scheduled our day after session or finalized our wedding album photos. We feel like terrible, terrible clients. It's pretty sad since our photos were/are the most important thing to us from our wedding day (aside from getting married, of course!) and we've just been too insanely busy to finalize things. In my defense, I did have all my favorites picked out but I only saved them in our wonderful photographer's online gallery and I'm pretty sure they weren't saved when our gallery expired. Whoops.

Despite our terrible slothliness (yes, I did just make that up) a really awesome wedding blog has decided to feature our engagement session! We love our engagement photos, we all put so much work into the shoot and it's really cool to see them recognized on another site.

You can check them out here at The Bride's Cafe. 

Now all we have to do is get our asses in gear, lose our post wedding pounds, schedule our day after shoot, and get our photos! We've managed to give a framed photo to almost all the people that helped us but we still don't actually have one for ourselves. We don't even have our photos on disc yet. That's some epic failage in the marriage department there and we need to get it taken care of ASAP. 

Wedding Photos Are Up!

Our wedding photos are up! They're better than I could have hoped and I'm really struck by how well they represent us. You can tell that we really enjoyed ourselves and genuinely love each other's company and there are some beautiful snapshots of everyone behaving themselves that make the chaos of the wedding day fade away.  I think our rabbi put it best when he told us he'd "never seen a couple with so much joy in their relationship" and I suddenly realized that maybe not all couples have this much fun when they're together.

Our Epic Wedding Photos

Click them! You know you want to!

A big, Huge, MASSIVE thank you Kim, April, Nely and David for capturing our day so beautifully! We knew from the beginning that you were perfect for us; how often do you find photographers as cool as you who not only go along with our crazy ideas but come up with even better ones of your own? We hope that all your couples have as much fun with you as we did and we absolutely can't wait for our day after session.

SNEAK PEEK: Wedding photos!

Our always amazing photographers Ohana Photographers have just put up a few sneak peak pics from our wedding!

Check them out here: http://ohanaphotographers.com/blog/sarah-and-evans-vintage-wedding-in-san-diego/

We love everything we've seen so far :) My only gripe is my dress which just won't stay up! I'm planning on working some double sided tape magic for our day after shoot to get some shots without the girls popping out all over the place. I think it was my body heat expanding the cotton layer because the dress just got bigger and bigger as the night went on!

OMG Married

E and I did it! We got hitched! A much more detailed and explanatory post is in the works but for now I leave you with a couple gems from our photographer's sneak peak:

 Our awesome wedding party. Ignore my armpit. 

E and I hiding under my veil

E and I under Gary's lamp

Engagement Photos are up!

Without further ado, I present to you:

S and E's Retro Engagement Shoot

It's absolutely fabulous, we're pretty much head over heels with our photographers.  If you haven't already you should seriously check them out. We wouldn't change a thing, except maybe correcting our ages since we were 8 and 10 when we first met. We forgive them the little mistake though, their awesomeness means they've been super busy creating art.

I'm not sure if we have a clear favorite but there are a number that we're definitely going to be blowing up. As soon as they get our online gallery up we'll post a few of our favorites here so you can help us decide.

 Choosing our photographer was SO difficult, our pictures are pretty much the most important thing to us and we couldn't have gone with better people. Ohana, we love you guys!

Well Phuck

When you start wedding planning everyone always says things are going to go wrong. It's like a mantra, designed to be chanted under your breath while calling vendors and making reservations

Somethingswillgowrong. Don'tfreakout. Somethingswillgowrong. Don'tfreakout.

I've taken a really laid back approach to wedding planning. A comfort over style approach from my shoes to the catering. Is it comfortable, does it taste good, is it fun? We really want to enjoy our day, not spend it freaking out over little details and whoopses and things that didn't go quite right.

To make our day as stress free as possible, I mapped out my priorities early on and I've been planning a lot of things ahead of schedule to prevent hiccups. My big can't-compromise-on-must-be-perfect "thing" was the wedding photography. I figured no one would remember if the food was good, what songs we played or what our flowers looked like, but the photographs of our night will last forever. When we are old and wrinkled and arguing about who has the best dentures, and subsequently who had the best teeth, we can look back on our wedding photos and compare chompers in our perfect wedding pictures.

It doesn't help that I'm slightly obsessed with photographs and art as well, I'm out of available wall and dresser space, I compulsively make photobooks and have a stack of beautiful frames waiting to be filled. I even registered for photo ledges because I'm just that obsessed. Photos capture a moment in time, like a window into the past and I'd never remember half the things I do if I didn't have a photograph to cue the memory.

All this brings me to the inevitable: we have a problem with our photographers. 

Everything was going so well. The nice to meet yous, first date, do we get along aspect went just dandy with David of Ohana Photographers. He's creative, funny, and easy going and we like to think we're equally awesome. We connected well and I think we'd be more than comfortable working with him and entrusting our precious memories into his capable hands. So where, might you ask, is the problem? Why the long, emotional, digressing post?   Oh readers, it's bad. The problem is the date. Our date, the date that's been our anniversary for the last eight years. Apparently, David's sister has taken a shine to the date as well, and has decided that she wants to get married on our day too.

Cue the angst.

Obviously, David cannot be at our awesome wedding and his sister's wedding at the same time. Obviously, family obligation, blood is thicker than water, etc etc means that he will not be able to shoot out wedding. This. Really. Blows. We're 6 months in to this planning thing, and most other photographers are booked. Even if we could find an available photographer, we've looked at just about every photographer between Los Angeles and San Diego and we really have our hearts set on Ohana. At this point, nothing can compare now that we've jumped in, both feet first, ready to get wet. How many photographers do you know that would bring buckets and umbrellas to an engagement session so they could chuck water at their clients? Or throw mass quantities of large, white balls in the air to snap the perfect picture? Don't even get me started on making out on cop cars, champagne piggy back rides and goofy groom face masks. Although a lot of it is the couple, Ohana really captures everything about the wedding that we want captured.

So, what do we do??? We could go forward with David photographing our engagement and possibly our trash the dress, while his associate photographs our wedding day. OR we could start from scratch and try to find a new photographer that hopefully has our date open and is awesome and up for some serious dorky fun. I just don't know what would be best. I also have a bad feeling that our less than favorite photographs on their website are from their associate though that could just be us projecting our angst. I was thinking that maybe if David threw the trash the dress in with the package we might be able to get over ourselves and give the associate a shot. That way if the associate's photographs of our wedding day suck, at least we have some photos by David of us in our wedding clothes....we'd just have to get hair and make up done again? Man, I just don't know.

What do you think? What would you do? What should we do? Why does the one thing you don't want to go wrong always go wrong when planning a wedding???