J+J Southern California Wedding Celebration Part 1: May 01, 2010

UPDATE: More images are available for viewing at http://proofs.lawrenceatienza.com/ Click on weddings and then click on their gallery. Make sure you request the password from Jennifer or Jason. Also note that both weddings will have the same password. Enjoy!

It was beautiful Saturday morning on May 01, 2010 in sunny Los Angeles. The day started at the Bride and Grooms home at about 10:30AM for some getting ready and detail shots.

As I entered their front door, I was greeted by smiling faces and a beautiful bride to be. I then moved upstairs to introduce myself to the rest of the 4 bride’s maids and found myself in a room full of amazing people.

After the introductions, I proceeded with setting up in the other room for the details shots of the dress, shoes and ring. Before that, I decided to take some quick shots of the bride’s maids getting their makeup and hair done by the talented Grace of Beauty by Grace.

Since the bride was the last to be worked on, I preceded to complete the detail shots in the next room. I first started with the wedding dress. The white silk wedding dress with red bar with gold accents across the waist hung on the curtain rail. I wanted to capture the fine details of the dress by using a 90mm 2.8 Macro lens. For the majority of the shots, I was able to use the bright southern California sun as fill light for the images.

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After a few variations of the dress were captured, I moved to the ring shots. I wanted the ring shots to have meaning to the couple. So, I looked around the room that might have meaning to them and discovered karate trophies awarded to the groom for his martial arts skills, where the trophy surprisingly worked well with the rings.

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I then needed to look for an object that has importance to the bride and remembered the music note wine stopper from her bridal shower.

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Since, I had a good amount of time left for detail shots, I decided to take another ring shot with some cool candles. The candles had a weave like pattern that to me symbolized the unity of man and wife.

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I liked the patterns on the candles so much, I used them as the background for the “Shoes” Cole Haan shots.

Once the detail shots were in the bag, I moved to the next room to find the bride in the makeup chair and the groom on the bed getting a massage. I’ve never seen this before and thought it would be a great capture to remember what I will surely do when the day come.

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Once the makeup and hair was complete and it was time to put on the dress.

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Now that all of the getting ready and detail shots were captured, we moved to the formals location but not without taking a walking down the street shot of the Groom and Groomsmen.

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We then move towards the Mulholland fountain where the wedding formal bridal party images were captured.  With only 30 minutes allocated for the wedding formals, I made sure that I arrived at the location first and setup the lighting.

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With the wedding formals complete, we moved to the Rec Center Studio at Echo Park where the ceremony and reception were held.

It was surely a short but sweet ceremony.

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Shortly after, the party started when the sun went down and the venue lighting took affect.

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You look around the Rec center Studio and find tables with Chinese takeout box centerpiece filled with chocolate dipped fortune cookies. Yumm. I wasn’t able to taste them but I am sure they were delicious.

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You walk down the aisle and find yourself also in fortune cookies heaven.

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An hour or so after dinner was served; dessert followed shortly after with the presence of Coolhaus and served their specialty ice cream.

The night ended with more dancing with the Bride and Groom at the center of the dance area.

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Here is a picture of the three of us. Thanks for a great time capturing your special day. I was happy to capture their Chinese wedding reception dinner. Images will be coming soon on a new blog post.

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