Ahhh, it’s been 6 years since I last shot a wedding, so it was a fabulous walk down memory lane to photograph people in wedding outfits again, freshly post-courthouse, with a dog and bouquet in tow. :) I had the BEST time with Adair and Andrew, who are two Durham-loving peas in a pod. They were married at the county courthouse that morning, and we met in the evening to photograph them walking around the city where they met and now call home. Nola, their sweet, and calm doggo, joined us. She was accompanied and handled by Katie, a beloved mutual friend of both mine and Adair, when she wasn’t looking extremely adorable while posing for little treats in the photos. We had a lot of fun talking snacks, scary movies, and their upcoming family wedding in Florida. They handled my incessant getting-to-know-you questions and my posing of them in bright, hot sunlight like champs, and I’m so glad that I got to meet them and document the first few hours of their newlywed life together. A huge congratulations to Adair and Andrew!

seriously, i can’t get enough of these pictures! being a raleigh wedding photographer books you weddings, but rarely trash the dress sessions are requested. bridal shoots are often requested, but let’s face it… a lot of people don’t want to actually harm their wedding dress with a trash the dress session. but i say you can always just kind of trash your dress and then dry clean it later. right ladies? i can’t wait to have another one of these sessions!

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a month or two ago stephan and i had our first consultation about her trash the dress shoot. her and her husband sean had recently married and she wanted to do a fun, artsy post-wedding shoot. stephan and i had tons of fabulous ideas and for the next month we both rummaged through thrift stores for great trash the dress props. we had a bit of a delay when we had to wait for our shooting permit from the american tobacco campus in durham, but we finally got it and our trash the dress session finally arrived!

for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a trash the dress session is a relatively new idea (within the past several years) where a bride has a very artsy shoot in a strange place (usually grungy or in the ocean or some body of water). the bride no longer plans on using the dress because the wedding has come and gone, and most of the time the dress was slightly damaged from the wedding and they can no longer resell it. so, she decides to have a trash the dress session where the dress literally gets trashed.

stephan and i had wanted to go into the water, but were informed by american tobacco that it’s severely frowned upon :) so we didn’t. but it did rain, and people did look at us like we were crazy taking the bride in her wedding dress out in the rain. the clouds made for some fierce shots. i love love love the results of this session and i give all the credit to stephan and her husband sean for having awesome ideas, being cooperative and patient, and being an awesome couple. you rock guys!

here’s a preview… more to come tomorrow and then later under “weddings>stephan-trash the dress” in my portfolio.

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