Nilay + Hayley @ San Chez

I met Nilay and Hayley for the first time on their wedding day. Usually I meet with the wedding couple prior to their big day, but these two hotshot attorneys are in Detroit and we couldn't get the schedules to match up prior to their wedding day. The ceremony was held at the beautiful First United Methodist Church in downtown Grand Rapids. What an amazing church! It is what all churches should strive to be - beautiful architecture, organ, stained glass - the whole package! Unfortunately the rain prevented us from venturing around downtown, but a great reception at San Chez's 3rd Floor was fantastic. I had been their the night before for another event, but Saturday's party was a blast.

Thanks Nilay and Hayley, it was a privilege being part of your beautiful day!

Kyle + Amy

Kyle and Amy were married on a Friday afternoon and hired me to cover just their wedding ceremony. The wedding was beautiful and we had a blast taking photos before the ceremony. Doing that allowed Kyle and Amy to get the butterflies out of their systems before their friends and family arrived for the ceremony. The grounds around the church were great and we were able to capture some great images. Be sure to click through to view ALL their wedding photos below!

Buck House Dedication

On September 13, 2008 the people who have been praying for Josh and Shelly Buck and their family were able to dedicate their new home on the NE side of Grand Rapids. As Pastor Jim Samra of Calvary Church said about the home, "When people stop and ask, 'where did that house come from?', the only answer we can give them is, 'it came from God!'"

It was a great day and I was able to spend 20 minutes inside BEFORE everyone else made it to the house during the rain. Who knew that 100-200 people could fit into their house, let alone their garage as the rain continued on Saturday afternoon.

If you're interested in viewing more photos, click here or on any of the photos below. If you're interested in finding out more about Josh and Shelly visit www.joshbuck.org to see their daily blog or visit www.thebuckproject.com to learn more about the project that took almost 1 year to complete, but will change their future forever!

Nick + Andrea

Nick and Andrea celebrated their special day with a ceremony in Lowell and a reception in Grand Rapids. Their ceremony was beautiful with a great tradition that I will be recommending to couples I work with. They said their vows, exchanged rings and lit their unity candle and after they did, the best man and maid of honor went and signed the wedding licence right then and their! Then the pastor followed and made it official - all while their friends and families watched. I'd never seen it before and absolutely love it! After they were done being "peppered" by birdseed, we went to Fallasburg Park in Lowell and to a special location that only I could get them into. If you like antique barns, be sure to check out the images. Then they were off to Dawn Marie's for a night of dancing, fun and keg stands...Click on the photos to see more.

Any Dirty Dancing Fans?

Seriously, one of the amazing wedding couples that I'll be photographing over the next few weeks has to have something like this up their sleeve! Watch the video below and enjoy!

Shopping to the Next Level

Call me weird or goofy, but I saw a press release yesterday about something new that Meijer Grocery Stores rolled out in Grand Rapids yesterday. They announced what they call "Meijer Grocery Express", which is a way for anyone to place a grocery order online at the Knapp's Corner Store on the East Beltline. There are over 45,000 products to choose from online and when you show up, you simply pull up to the front of the store and what you've ordered is placed in your car. Not a bad idea!

Think about this service for a mom with 3 or 4 kids. Now she can order her groceries while everyone is napping during the day and then swing by the store with all the kids in the car, not get any of them out, have the groceries loaded into her car and off she goes. Meijer compares it to the "good ol' days" when they first began when a store clerk would actually fill your order for you instead of you walking around the store and selecting products.

I don't know about you, but I'm always looking for ways to save time and money and this service will definately be something my wife and I use. How about you?

Michael + Carrie @ Mackinac Island

Michael and Carrie celebrated their special day on beautiful Mackinac Island. It was a Michigan destination wedding captured by Associate Photographer Theresa Milanowski. Carrie met Theresa at a wedding last year and specifically asked that Theresa photograph her wedding at the Little Stone Church on Mackinac. What a dream day with perfect weather on 8-8-08! From riding around on horse drawn carriages to a great meal at the Harbor View Inn, Michael and Carrie's day went perfectly. After seeing some of these images, I would highly recommend Mackinaw for a wedding!

Photograph Those You Love

I am a big fan of Atlanta based music photographer Zack Arias. He recently wrote the post below and it just about brought me to tears. I just had to post it. Enjoy! -- Russ

Photo by Zack Arias

It is with heavy heart that I have to report that we lost my step father this morning. Craig had been suffering from ALS over the past year and a half. It is a nasty disease that leaves your mind but takes your body. I haven’t lost a lot of close people in my life. My grandfather was the closest person I have ever lost and I regret so much that I never made a portrait of him. I just have these grainy disc camera photos of him to remember him by. Nothing that really says who he was or what he was about.

When I was working at Kinko’s I nearly lost my job twice. Both times for the same reason; enlarging prints for someone’s funeral. I would meet a customer at the counter and with red puffy eyes they would slide a dog eared, scratched 4×6 print across the counter. This person in the photo had just passed away and they wanted a 16×20 made to place by the casket. It wasa always some horrible photo. Never a great portrait. There would be a laundry basket in the corner. The drapes on the windows were stained. Reflections in glasses. Scratches on the print. I would take the job, put everything on hold and start to work on the scan in PhotoShop. This is a soul’s last known image on earth. They deserve better than this. My manager didn’t think this way. Scan and print. That’s it. I revolted and continued working on images for funerals. She wasn’t cold hearted enough to actually fire me for the few hours I would spend on those images but she wasn’t at all happy with me either.

That planted a philosophy I have on every single photoshoot. “I’m shooting for this person’s funeral.” I better make images that people will want to see and remember this person by. Something that shows who they were and what they did and how they were living their life pursuing a dream. I’ve made as many visits as I could over the last year to my Mom and Craig. They live in Elkin, NC. I knew this year I had to get Craig to sit for me. I had to photograph him before I lost him. Craig was a retired homebuilder and was now preaching at a church near Elkin. He was born and raised in Dallas, TX but moved with my Mom to Elkin for a slower change of pace and to be near my Mom’s family there. He loved the community and the church he landed in had him start preaching because they were in need of a new preacher. That dying little church began to thrive.

Knowing that things would escalate quickly I had prints made and shipping arrangement taken care of well in advance. Also knowing how many people loved Craig in his community, I had dozens of 8×10 prints made of this for folks to keep.

Photo by Zack Arias

Photo by Zack Arias

On my last trip up there a month or so ago I photographed Craig watching the kids play in the backyard. Goodbye Craig. My gosh we are going to miss you. You’re home now though. Finally in a place bigger than your home country of Texas. Are you photographing those you love? I’m not. Not like I should be. I have a big long list of people to get started on. You always think you have time. Sometimes you do. Most of the time you don’t. Had I not known that we would be losing Craig this year, I probably would have never gotten around to making the images above. Sad isn’t it? Me. A photographer who can’t turn a camera on to his own family. There’s your challenge for the week. Family portrait time this week.

Cheers,
Zack

Worlds Largest Wedding Cake

I heard about this on the radio, but didn't believe it! Can you imagine a cake this big!

"Today, at the New England Bridal Showcase, Mohegan Sun unveiled what it hopes will be the world's largest wedding cake. Measuring 17-feet tall and weighing 15,032 pounds, the seven-tiered cake is almost three-times the weight of the current record in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest wedding cake.

The Mohegan Sun wedding cake is vanilla flavored and decorated with bows and hearts. Ingredients include: 10,000 pounds of pound cake batter and 4,810 pounds of creamy frosting with a taste of vanilla and almond. Comparatively speaking, the cake weighs more than five Volkswagen Beetles and can feed up to 59,000 people.

Chef Lynn Mansel, Mohegan Sun's Executive Pastry Chef and resident "Michelangelo of batters and buttercream," began creating the cake on Sunday, February 1st in the Uncas Ballroom. Along with his team of 57 chefs and pastry artisans, Chef Mansel baked 700, 18x24 inch vanilla sheet cakes. Then, using frosting as cement, they created 200, five- and six-layered bricks, which were put together to form the tiers of the wedding cake. Steel discs were used as cake separators and two fork-lifts helped raise each tier as the wedding cake took shape.

The current record in the Guiness Book of World Records is 5,334-pounds, and was unveiled at Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2003. The five-tiered cake, which measured 22-feet tall, celebrated the wedding of the animated characters Shrek and Fiona -- who were the main characters in the original Shrek movie -- and the opening of the new Shrek 4-D ride at Universal Studios."