This post is part 1 of a 3-part series. Read part 1 – Read part 2 - Read part 3

Remember the foreshadowing I mentioned in this post?

At last, you get to find out what happened. What happened was, Crystal and Peter got married! Are you surprised? Did you already guess the secret plot twist? Was the fact that we are wedding photographers give away the ending?

Before we start with happily ever after, a warning: there are 24 photos in this post. Yeah, I know, that’s a lot for one post. And it’s only Part 1. But I love so many of the photos that it was hard to pare it down to just 24. Never fear, I have taken steps to ensure that they will load quickly, by optimizing the heck out of them.

Part 1 shows the bride and groom and their families getting ready. The perspective switches back and forth between the locations of the bride and the groom. Crystal got ready at her parents’ house, and Peter got ready at a beach house. Having two photographers allowed us to put together quite a complete narrative of the day (what you’re getting here is only a tiny slice of that narrative).

This was a highly creative, relaxed and friendly group; everyone who participated was a musician or artist or something of that nature. The awesome felted birds were made by Crystal’s mom. The piano duet features Crystal and her dad. Crystal herself did something I’ve never seen a bride do before: she put makeup on other people. They were all so easy to photograph and to be with that it hardly even felt like work.

The ceremony took place at the UCSC Arboretum, so I had the pleasure of following the bride and flower girl as they sneaked through the back trails to get to the ceremony site without being seen by any guests. Any wedding that involves sneaking through the woods is going to be a great one.

Guess who has a birthday today?

Here’s a hint – this is a photo of the birthday girl enjoying some cake during a shoot:

Happy birthday, Rebecca!

Last Sunday, The Girl and I attended the Maker Faire.  What’s the Maker Faire, you ask?  Well, it’s a lot of things.  Mostly it’s a bunch of oddly creative people making oddly creative things in oddly creative ways.  It’s sort of like what would happen if Burning Man crashed into Cirque du Soleil while Cirque du Soleil was busy ingesting a county fair.

There are robots.  There are Legos.  There are cars that run on trash and walnut shells.  There are victorian houses on wheels, and giant copper snails and tesla coils and furry cars and fire trucks that shoot fire and lots and lots of people in top hats and corsets (sometimes at the same time).

And of course, I took pictures.  Lots and lots of pictures: