This post is Part 3 of a 4-part series. Read Part 1 – Read Part 2 – Read Part 3 – Read Part 4

Pacific Oaks Vineyard Estate is an ideal location for weddings. You really have to see it to understand. You’d also have to meet Judy, the owner, who is very sweet and easy to work with. She is at least half of what makes the location so ideal. Her husband is a Southerner (like me, he is from South Carolina) and the property is a blend of California natural beauty and Southern architectural charm.

There’s a vineyard, of course, that slopes down a hill to catch the light of the setting sun in quite a romantic way. It’s a real functioning vineyard with a small winery attached to it; at our initial tour of the place, Judy gave us each a sample bottle of her wine. (I drank it with my sister Esther later that evening. It was delicious.) Behind the main house is a ceremony garden with a lush green lawn, and in front of it, huge oak trees and redwood benches. The two large decks are ideal for gathering people and staging events like cake-cutting, bouquet-tossing, and the like. A cheerfully yellow guest room is provided for brides to use in getting ready, mere steps away from the entrance to the ceremony garden. The property is immaculately kept and lovingly tended, and everything is laid out to make the logistics of a wedding day simpler and smoother.

The interior space is not available for weddings, but we got to see it when we scoped out the location. That pool house is amazing! I must say it would be pretty great to get married in that pool. I’d make all the guests take their places in rows in the shallow end, and I’d float down the aisle to the deep end on an inflatable giraffe. We’d make use of the great acoustics in that room by shouting our vows at top volume. Somebody (the aforementioned very talented musician sister Esther?) would cannonball into the pool and then play love songs on the panflute. It would be magical.

But this isn’t about me and my fictional love story, it’s about Jill and Chase and their very real one. They timed their ceremony perfectly. The golden hour was almost upon us when the ceremony ended and we started walking around taking portraits. At Pacific Oaks there are lots of intimate little nooks, great for posing and even better for kissing. We encouraged Jill and Chase to take full advantage of this.

We were pleasantly surprised to encounter some friendly young chickens in the vineyard. Chickens again! One of our favorite wedding shots of all time involves chickens; you can see it in this earlier post. These chickens must be treated well and given everything a chicken could ask for in this life. They followed us around and seemed to want us to pick them up. One of them did try to steal Jill’s ring, but who could blame the chicken? It’s a nice ring!

This post is Part 1 of a 4-part series. Read Part 1 – Read Part 2 – Read Part 3 – Read Part 4

Welcome to 2010! Happy New Year! (Yeah, I know it’s already February, but at least our first post of the year is in time for the Chinese New Year, right?) Things have been busy in Red Bat World. Photos have been processed, couples have been bonded in matrimony, various events have been thoroughly documented, terrifyingly large prints have been made for a bridal expo. Vast quantities of fun and work have occurred in approximately equal amounts.

Let’s go back to 2009, to the day that Jill and Chase got married. Some of you already know about this: Jill and Chase wanted a wedding with no guests, and they wanted it to be in Santa Cruz. That’s right, no guests at all! Just the officiant, the photographers, and the stylist. Before the wedding day, they drove from their home near Los Angeles several times to pick the perfect location, line up all the details, and of course, have a Red Bat engagement session. To read about (and see photos of) their engagement session, click here.

We knew that photographing a wedding with no guests would be an unusual experience. No crowd to infiltrate, no list of people to follow and try to capture without being obnoxious. What would this day be like, we wondered? What would our future be… No, wait, those are lyrics from The Sound of Music. Oops! (That happens to me sometimes.) Back to the subject at hand.

Of course it wasn’t really true that there were no guests, because WE were the guests, along with the highly talented stylist, Jill G. By this point in our relationship with Jill and Chase, we considered them to be good friends, so it felt quite natural to attend their wedding. In fact, the whole idea seemed totally normal by the time the day arrived, just part of the love story that is Jill and Chase together. It was a little bit like a wedding-themed photoshoot, but it was as serious as any other wedding. It was a day of solemn ceremonies, but it was also casual and full of jokes.

And because there were no guests, we were able to focus completely on the bride and groom and hundreds of details we wouldn’t have time to capture at a regular wedding.

This post has some of our favorite getting ready shots. For Chase, getting ready meant arriving at the venue before Jill and putting together a canopy he’d made especially for their ceremony. Chase is quite handy with a blowtorch. For Jill, getting ready meant achieving total perfection in hair and makeup, and boy was it worth it: there was absolutely no retouching required on her photos. Patrick followed Chase and watched him construct the canopy, while I hung around the two Jills (Jill the bride and Jill G. the stylist) and captured the process of making the bride even more beautiful than she usually is.

In case you’re wondering, Jill’s getting-ready, as well as the reception, happened at the Scotts Valley Hilton. The wedding itself took place at Pacific Oaks Vineyard Estate.

There are a lot of photos in this post, but if all has gone as I planned, they’ve all finished loading now that you’ve reached the end of the words. Enjoy, and make sure you look for photos of the Jill and Chase ceremony and reception in posts to come…