Parent Photo Albums || Nicole + Chris's Highland Brewing Company Wedding in Asheville, NC

I loved giving people gifts. I love even more getting to make said gifts. From age 5 onward, whenever I could, I handmade all family Christmas gifts, starting as early as June to ensure that everyone’s was completed on time.

So, to be able to incorporate gift giving into my business has been a real pleasure. My favorite product that I started offering last year was a parent album, a smaller version of each couple’s photo album showcasing almost exclusively the images that the couple, the parents and siblings are in. This way, each parent gets their own commemorative album tailored to them, highlighting the moments that they were a part of.

Wedding Photo Album || Nicole + Chris's Highland Brewing Company Wedding

By far, my favorite part of creating Nicole and Chris’s heirloom album was interweaving each line of their vows throughout the book. Design-wise, adding text to a photo album presents its own challenges; namely, how to make it readable without distracting from the photos. I shoot each wedding with the album in mind, using compositional elements like leading lines or shallow depth of field to create negative space perfect for overlaying words. Typically, if I’m adding just a few verses or quotations in an album, I can choose which already-designed (by me, in a different program) pages to pair the text with based on the blurb’s shaping. With Nicole and Chris’s I needed to keep their vows in the order they wrote them, and somehow as I was creating the photo layouts for each page, the text seemingly just fit right in perfectly. A reflection of how easily Nicole and Chris work together as well, I think.

Morgan + Mike || Wedding Album

In putting together this album, my focus was to tell Morgan and Mike's story of excitement (particularly in their first look), personality (especially through the personal touches in their decor) and pure happiness at saying their forever vows surrounded by friends and family, even family from across the ocean. Because they did a first look (one of my favorite parts of the day!) we spent the first hour relaxing and taking couples portraits and group shots with their maid-of-honor and best man.

Morgan + Mike's Highland Brewing Wedding

2017's wedding season began quite a bit earlier than I'd anticipated as I got to shoot my first winter wedding since my very first wedding 4 years previous. One afternoon I was taking a nap when I heard my phone buzzing and - after pulling myself out of a cozy slumber - booked a last minute wedding on the spot. You see, Morgan and Mike met in Ireland while she was studying abroad and with so many unknowns surrounding the visa process, they had to plan their wedding rather last minute as they had 90 days to get married once Mike's visa request was approved. Luckily, they had the wedding wizard, Michelle of Party Envy, to help and on a balmy January evening they said their "I do's" amidst friends and family.

January 27, 2017 Wedding at Highland Brewing Company

I cannot say enough how much I love intimate weddings! Morgan and Mike met while Morgan was studying abroad in Ireland (more on their sweet story in their full blog post in a couple months.) With so many unknowns surrounding the visa process, they had to plan their wedding rather last minute as they had 90 days to get married once Mike's visa request was approved; we only began discussing wedding photography a few weeks before their ceremony!