Wedding Photography and Portrait blog

We had the pleasure of photographing Chris and Martha’s FABULOUS day at the St Paul College Club : ) What a NEAT location!! I feel like we could have taken pictures of just the two of them there for hours! Such neat rooms, nooks, crannies and staircases! Not only was it beautiful, but Martha got to walk down the front staircase for the ceremony – how romantic!! The grand staircase lead right into the front room of the house where their ceremony took place. It was such a nice, intimate ceremony with great musicians!

After their ceremony they did a receiving line in the Library of the house – it worked out so nicely because of the room’s circular shape! This mansion really was made for weddings

Something I though was neat was that they also had a ‘hot chocolate bar’ – amazing!!! … {Hot chocolate is one of my {Karin} favorite things!!!} They had a little sign right next to the hot chocolate bar told guests that they could make their hot chocolate ‘Irish’ at the bar {or something neat to that extent} How fun!

Chris and Martha are also rather goofy people – and so were their awesome guests!! We had a ton of fun with our ‘photobooth’ – a bit revised this time – but do enjoy those pictures! They also had a very fun time dancing – everyone from Chris and Martha to their parents and some good friends of theirs – they sure are good dancers!

Thanks to Andrea and Jared Porter for connecting us with Chris and Martha!! It was such a fun day!

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When we met Stephanie and Joe, we could just tell how excited they were to get married : ) They are such a sweet couple that truly love each other.

So – on a chilly {but sunny} first Saturday of the new year we headed down to Owatonna, MN for Joe and Stephanie’s wedding. It was a brisk day, but a very quick drive! I {Karin} grew up in Winona, MN so it was a pleasant surprise to experience Owatonna not being a super long drive : )

We arrived and got started with pictures – they both have really fun families that were great to photograph. I think one of my favorites was their ring-bearer. We had all the guys together {including him} and first had them all smile {which he did SO nicely!} and then we had them do ‘serious’ faces – I think he {the ring-bearer} did the best one!! He had such a great expression – and he is only 4 years old!!

I would say the majority of our weddings the bride and groom recite the ‘traditional’ vows for their denomination {Dan and I did too – I would have fallen apart otherwise!} but Joe and Steph wrote their own – and how sweet they were! They have known each other for awhile now – so they were certainly excited and ready to be married!

We feel so blessed an honored to have been part of their wonderful day – every negative degree of it! {it was -17 that day!! Those brave folks still went on a buggie ride!!} Luckily our travel to and from Owatonna went well for their wedding – we hope they went well for everyone else that went too!

Hope you enjoyed the photo slideshow. I think from now on our blog posts will look like this as opposed to embedded jpgs. If anyone who checks our blog consistently has any feedback on this we’d love to hear it!

Karin and I had an awesome New Years eve at the St. Paul hotel with Courtney and Khia. It was a fun (although challenging) location to work at… and their friends, family and hotel guests everywhere. Their two boys were hilarious… and although they did a great job holding it together for the formal pictures they were zooming around any time they could. Although it was several degrees below zero Khia (the bride) really wanted to do some outdoor pictures at rice park in St. Paul. The first 2 minutes felt good after the heat and close quarters of the hotel… but after the initial cooldown, and by the time we had walked to the park it was downright freezing! Thats MN for ya.

On a technical note Karin and I realized that this was our first wedding done entirely with artificial light. I do love using natural light, either outdoors or coming in through windows, but it is nice to know that we’re up to the challenge! The last wedding that we photographed which was entirely in a hotel was at the Embassy Suites in Bloomington early in the summer. You can view several of the photos in our wedding photography galleries from that Minneapolis, MN wedding
on our website. There are a lot of advantages to having the wedding ceremony and reception in the same location, and for a New Years Eve wedding it was perfect!