Imagine my surprise when I saw this in my inbox!! WOW WOW WOW! We are so blown away to be awarded this especially when this is the BRIDES Choice awards. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you… what an honor!

Birmingham, Alabama – January, 21, 2010 - WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced His Hands Photographs has been selected to receive the WeddingWire 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards™ for wedding photography.

The annual Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and celebrates excellence in quality and service within the wedding industry, as determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds. 

His Hands Photographs is among the top five percent of all vendors in the WeddingWire community, which includes over 100,000 wedding professionals across the US and Canada. Awards were given to winners across 19 different service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers.

“We are excited to recognize and honor the success of the top wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “The annual Bride’s Choice Awards program has given us the unique opportunity to highlight the best wedding professionals in each region as reviewed by brides and grooms who have utilized their services in the past year.”

We are happy to announce that His Hands Photographs is among the very best wedding photographers within the WeddingWire Network, which includes WeddingWire and Martha Stewart Weddings. We would like to thank our past newlyweds for nominating us for the 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards.

For more information, please visit our WeddingWire Storefront today at {Enter WeddingWire Storefront URL}.

About WeddingWire, Inc.
WeddingWire is the only online wedding planningresource designed to empower both engaged couples and wedding vendors. WeddingWire enables engaged couples to search, compare and book over 100,000 reviewed wedding vendors nationwide, from wedding photographers to wedding cakes. WeddingWire also offers an online community and a suite of cutting-edge planning tools, including wedding websites and wedding checklists, all at no charge. For wedding vendors, WeddingWire provides free online management tools creating the only market opportunity that gives businesses control over their clients, reviews, leads and performance. In addition, WeddingWire has partnered with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (NYSE: MSO) to provide its network of local vendors and online wedding-planning tools in the Weddings section of www.MarthaStewartWeddings.com. For additional information, please visit www.WeddingWire.com.

And one from our After Session this weekend…. who would have thought a wedding in January would look like this??

I love an “after session” ! The wedding and honeymoon is over, the pressure is off, and by the time we get to the after seession, we are old friends! This was the case here too! The wedding went perfectly and the after session was very laid back and fun. We met at Tannehill and I even talked her into the water. Of course, she didn’t want the dress wet, so we improvised. Beautiful bride and beautiful location… makes my job easy.

We have been excited about this session for months! When this couple chose us for the wedding, they also signed up for a super fun after session. They met playing tennis at the Pelham Racquet Club so we had to incorporate this into pictures. We had a blast. I think we laughed the entire session. This is just a sneak peak… there are so many more!

Wikipedia defines “Trash the dress” as:  photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is completely out of place. It is generally shot in the style of glossy beauty and glamour photography. Usually brides decide to have pictures taken on the beach, but possibilities are endless. City streets, rooftops, garbage dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings are only few examples of trash the dress session locations. (Article here.)

I love what Today’s Bride Online says: The brides say it’s liberating, relieves wedding stress and is a unusual way to capture moments in her dress that aren’t so stiff, like the traditional snaps taken on the wedding day. Many modern brides say it’s an expression of their commitment to their groom; all the while choosing to place more value in the memories of the big day than the dress itself. Brides willing to trash the dress are adventurous; risk-takers who want out-of-this-world pictures. While some brides opt for a mild trashing that can be erased with a decent dry cleaning, others go for full destruction….  But at its core, Trash the Dress is all about natural reactions, spontaneity and feeling free to have fun and to laugh out loud. (Article here.)

Suite101.com defines Trash the Dress as: This style of after-wedding bridal portraits (which sometimes includes the groom), take place in a variety of unorthodox settings such as industrial parks, and urban areas, where the beauty and grace of a wedding dress against the back drop of a cold, and rough environment offers an interesting conflict, making for unusual and artistic photography. (Read more: “Trash the Dress: A New Tradition in Post Wedding Photography” )

At His Hands Photographs, we call it “The After Session”. We changed the name after too many brides looked horrified to think we wanted to trash their wedding dress! We tell our brides that we schedule the session for right after you come home from the honeymoon but before you get your dress cleaned. This helps us be a little more relaxed and allow us to get some fantastic portraits that you will cherish forever! We have the best time finding new places to have the session. Think state park, a train graveyard, downtown, etc. In the next few weeks we will be playing tennis with a bride and visiting a beautiful covered bridge. It is important to us for every “after session” to be unique. This is the time for you to be different. Did you wear you hair up for the wedding? For the after session, go for more casual hair and makeup. The point is to have fun, wear your wedding dress again, and have portraits LIKE NO ONE ELSE. So, yes, we love the after session. We won’t be trashing anyone’s dress unless they want us to but we will be giving our brides works of art like this:

We had such a fun time! They never said anything when we were excited about the parking deck as our last location. I know they thought we were crazy. But we all love the results. I told the bride I wanted to do something totally different and she was game! Unique and so much fun!

We were having fun with this one. I think it looks like a horror movie!

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