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April 2007

Tiffany & Donnie held their beautiful wedding & reception at Valle Vista! They had a “Lucky in Love” themed wedding and it was so neat…the favors, programs, cake table, card box – everything was perfectly planned to convey their theme. 🙂 The sunset was gorgeous that evening and we were able to get some amazing gazebo/water shots with them.

Tiffany was a model bride to say the least…as I was shooting, I noticed how she would change her look and poses like a pro and I was floored. Apparently, her grandfather is a photographer and used to have her model for him when she was younger, I can see why! 🙂 She is so beautiful and they were a great couple to work with.

Here's a funny shot from last Thursday…I put this tag on my black suitcase as a joke since everytime we go somewhere, it seems like a million black suitcases that all look alike come down the conveyor belt. It was a good thing it was on there though because as I waited for dad to bring over all of the luggage to one area where I was at, I watched a lady pick up my bag and nearly walk off with it! :O She must have seen the tag, laughed and put it back. 😀 (Of course, I would've ran after her if she had gotten very far before I realized that was my bag!) Well, the other thought was that she tried lifting it and quickly realized it wasn't hers…as you'll notice, SWA tagged my bag under the 51-100 lbs category. (OMG!) LOL I seriously didn't think I'd bring home as much stuff as I did…between the shopping and the trade show goodies, my poor suitcase was barely able to zip shut. In fact, we sat on the edges to get it closed. 🙂

On Wednesday, we saw Brook Todd's presentation on Luxury Weddings and the vision for my new website that we're creating for this year came alive after that, I'm so excited. In fact, I started on the home page design last night and it is fabulous…it's SO me! (mostly pink, of course….)

After his presentation, I finished the last room of the tradeshow and found these awesome linen covered flushmount style albums that I'd like to start carrying this year. Their sample book has the couple's names spelled out in the beads on the outer cover and then the inside is like the usual hard board flushmount style albums but this one was designed with their engagement pictures inside! What a fabulous idea!! The couple could display the book in their home, bring it with them to their pre-wedding festivities, use it to display on the gift table at the reception, use it as a guest book, the possibilities were endless.

On Wednesday afternoon, we decided to go through some more of the various themed hotels in Vegas to see what all was there. We started at New York, New York, then went to MGM, Wynn & then the Bellagio where we finished off the night with dinner at the Bellagio followed by their water show that is timed to music, it was awesome!
Here I am all wrapped up in pink. 🙂
I LOVE this shot…in fact, I may enter it in the print competition next year…
Here are the lions at MGM…
And I'm hoping the glass doesn't break at this point….LOL
The wedding chapel at MGM….
The famous Elvis shot hanging on their wall…
I LOVED their entry at the Wynn, it was so beautiful…flowers were hanging down from the trees in various colors and made for some fabulous pics!
Here's the ornate tile walkway…
And the ceiling of parasols hanging down…
Here I am with dad in front of the waterfall at the Wynn….thank you to the random person who took this, it's one of our favorites! 😉
And it wouldn't be complete without a stop at Ethel's Chocolate lounge at the Fashion Show mall. My step mom loves Ethel M's chocolates so dad found this shop in the mall so he could bring her a box of her favorite chocolates back from Vegas.
Loved the colors in there…
We dropped off all of our shopping bags at Paris and I looked out the window and saw this beautiful sunset gracing the Eiffel Tower on our last night there….
Then we headed to the Bellagio where we had dinner and walked around the lobby taking pictures of the 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers from world-renowned artist, Dale Chihuly. It was incredible!
Their botanical garden inside was amazing…a combination of hand-blown glass and over sized exotic flowers made you feel like you were in a real life Alice in Wonderland experience.
Dad surprised me with a beautiful pink sapphire & diamond necklace on the last night of the trip as a special keepsake and remembrance of the great time we had together last week. It is so beautiful, thanks dad!! 🙂

Some people have told me the images have been slower to load on my blog the past few days so I went ahead and resized all of them so hopefully this will help. 🙂 Anyway, last Tuesday was an incredibly busy day…we went to Matthew Jordan Smith's seminar and he was great! He is the photographer for America's Next Top model and has photographed celebrities like Oprah, Tyra, Aretha, etc.

Then I went to Joe Buissink's class that afternoon and he was simply amazing…he shoots celebrity and high-end weddings on a regular basis (like Jessica Simpson's wedding) and he's the most humble photographer you'll ever meet, I loved it. In between classes, I took time to walk the tradeshow floor some more where our wedding photographer, Gary Fong (pictured above) was doing a live demo of his new Whaletail flash diffuser accessory. Gary is such an amazing photographer and businessman, he probably has one of the largest followings of anyone out there. 🙂 Needless to say, I bought the Whaletail at his debut and I'm most excited about the colored gels it comes with…I think it will take our modeling shoots to a whole new level.

Here are some fun shots from images that Joe showed everyone at his seminar, he photographed this dog in various costumes for fun and his images are now being turned into a huge product line, like greeting cards, calendars, etc. that will be released in the U.S. later this year!

Here's Denis Reggie introducing Joe at the beginning…Denis is the man who coined the phrase and concepts of "photojournalism" which took our industry to a whole new level. (No more stuffy 1980's poses!) 🙂
Some more fun dog shots below…
And here's Bobbi & her husband, Mike. I ran into them after the seminar…they are so cute together, they remind me a lot of me & John. 🙂 (Bobbi, I'll be good and leave out the funny face shots you took of yourself…) ;p
Here's Joe Buissink….
And on the way back to the room that evening, I ran into this couple who had just gotten married. She was trying to fix her dress but it wasn't cooperating so I immediately went into wedding mode and helped her with the dress and took a few fun shots of the two of them together and of the crowd in front of them. (Nothing like being in a hotel with thousands of wedding photographers around you! LOL)
Congrats!!