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

Early on in her relationship with the Red Bats, Sarah announced that her favorite color is orange. I took pictures in her room while her bridesmaids helped her get ready, and I was kind of stunned by the intensity of her orange-painted walls. She was not kidding about liking orange, I thought, admiring anyone who would choose to live with such vivid color. (I also admire her because she’s tough enough to do CrossFit workouts, and because she’s so incredibly nice.)

Orange was theme color she chose for her wedding, of course, and it showed up in many places that day. My favorite: the orange paper lanterns that hung in the trees at the reception site. They stood out against the green of the leaves, and as the sun was setting, they echoed the color of the sky. I thought of the paintings of J. W. Waterhouse and the illustrations of Maxfield Parrish, and in the days afterward, I kept seeing in my mind those orange lanterns glowing. I even dreamed about them. This contemplation of the color orange led me to do some reading on the subject.

Obviously, with a name like Red Bat Photography, we care about what colors mean. And as you know if you live inside my head, I tend to overthink the implications of every detail of everything, ever, so I ran to the internet to find out about orange. I was going to write a treatise on it for you, but then I remembered how many photos there are in this post (are they done loading yet? no? I’ll keep talking) and I decided to just give you some links.

If you want to know more about the many meanings and uses of orange, you can start with this wikipedia entry about orange, and this entry about color psychology. Or try this page for a good overview on the subject. You can explore the implications of orange using the the Luscher Color Diagnostic method, have a look at the orange chakra, and find shades of orange with strange names at Colour Lovers.

If you don’t want to do any of that, you can get the basic idea from this chart (which must’ve come from somewhere but I can’t find the link to credit the site):

Now keep all of that information in mind as you view these photos of Sarah and Jon and their wedding reception, which may not seem directly related to most of the subjects under discussion above, but are definitely related to having a good time and being in love and yes, the color orange.

Also, notice that they put their engagement photos on their wine bottles. We feel so flattered when people do that.

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

Brooke and Josh came all the way from Seattle to get married at Costanoa, at a time of year when it’s usually not raining around here (it was September). It’s logical to presume that they were hoping to escape the frequent rain of their current residence on their wedding day. Depending on how you define “rain” you could possibly argue that they did avoid official precipitation, but unofficially, it was in fact raining. Sort of.

What fell from the sky was that kind of mist you get in the middle of a fog, but it wasn’t cold that day and the not-quite-rain felt marvelous on bare skin. Nobody seemed the least bit upset about the moisture. Those who were concerned about getting wet held umbrellas, and the ceremony proceeded as planned.

Of course I found the foggy scene bewitching. I’m a fool for the magical potential of fog, and enjoy saying to myself that things are “shrouded” in the stuff. I was already halfway to being in love with that stretch of coastline where Costanoa sits. To see these two tall beautiful people reading e.e. cummings to each other on a coastal hillside, with everything around us clad in those shades of yellow and brown and purple and green that I’ve admired so greatly ever since moving to California, made me feel like I was floating on the romance of it all. Brooke later described that day as “effervescent,” a word that I thought fit just right. Effervescent, with fairies lurking in the bluffs. (That fruity bit about the fairies was mine, not Brooke’s.)

I know that probably sounds silly, but just look at the faces of these happy people, especially the children. We were far away from the rest of the world (that’s how Costanoa makes you feel) and it felt like time had stopped.