So, with the fall season and all we are slammed so we decided to pass on our phone calls to a third party…. she will give you the best customer service ever….lol.  Yes, this is my phone! She wanted to see it and of course I couldn’t say no. More from this family session this week!

Cory tells me there is a funny story surrounding these candles. After we have a few people caption the picture, I will explain.

Ok, so there is a story behind the pictures below! Cory and I bought this love seat when we first got married…. 9 years ago! We have a cat that decided after 4 years that this was the perfect scratching post. So, this couch has been in our office covered by a slipcover for 3 years now. We never sit it in, it just takes up space. We decided MONTHS ago that we would call a local charity to pick it up for a donation. Well, we haven’t called and it was still there. Cory kept joking with me that he was going to put it on the front lawn just to get it out of the house. I told him he better not put it on the lawn, that I would be horrified. Today Cory had enough… this is how I found him. See the guy in the moped? He had just given Cory the thumbs up as he drove by. I was laughing so hard that I can’t believe the picture came out in focus. I promptly made him REMOVE the couch from our front lawn. It is now in our carport waiting for someone to pick it up. Anything is better than the front lawn….

Anyone care to caption this????

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!

Ok, notice the bride is wiping a tear away in  the backgroud….