Carolyn+Shawn // Wedding at The Umstead Hotel.

Remember Carolyn and Shawn from their engagement session? They’re back! Only this time we were surrounded by 100+ other people calling Carolyn and me by the same name and it was a very confusing but lovely 8 hours. ;) Carolyn’s dad is named Steve and that’s also my dad’s name, and she also has a grandmother named Jean and that’s my middle name! We are like a name-twinning family. They’re also all really short like me so I immediately liked them from the beginning. :) The wedding took place in the always gorgeous first weekend of November at the Umstead, and the weather was beautiful. Carolyn and Shawn’s families have been so good to us throughout their whole engagement, and we were happy to spend the day with them while we watched them all celebrate (they’re all fierce dancers). Steve also set up a slideshow for his speech! I’m a sucker for slideshows because I get to see our clients as little kids, usually with their old cats, and everyone loves pictures of kids with cats. We could not be happier to have had Carolyn and Shawn as clients, and we wish them all the happiness in the world, and we also hope that they went down that slide from the Atlantis commercial like at least one hundred times during their honeymoon.

  • Date: November 5, 2016
  • Ceremony + Reception Venue: The Umstead Hotel and Spa // Cary, NC
  • First Dance Song: “I Won’t Give Up” – Jason Mraz
  • Carolyn’s Occupation: Office Manager
  • How You Met: 9th grade year of high school.
  • Interesting Fact: We are high school sweethearts.
  • Honeymoon: Atlantis, Bahamas.
  • Vendor Credits: Officiant – Rev. Brent M. Rector. DJ – Mark McNally of Joe Bunn DJ Company. Florist – Gregg Kennedy of Brides and Bouquets. Cake – Blue Moon Bakery. Caterer – The Umstead. Hair/Makeup – Kerri Nicole. Coordinator – Kailey Godley of A Southern Soiree. Linen Rentals – CE Rentals.

Meei+William+LeXi+LeXuen // At Home Session.

Are my fellow American blog readers prepared to feel really inadequate when it comes to the number of languages you speak? Good! You’ve come to the right place. Meei contacted us a while back to do a family session with her husband and two daughters. They love the age of their girls and wanted to get it documented (and we agree; 1 and 3 are super fun ages!). We knew that Meei is Chinese, and we knew we’d have about a 5% chance of pronouncing her full name correctly, but she was super nice about our American handicap and told us to call her May. We also knew that her husband’s name was William, so we were 100% confident in our ability to pronounce his name (we were right!). But what we didn’t know is that William is actually Dominican! And William speaks Spanish and Meei speaks Chinese! They met while they were living in New York and they speak English to each other! And William speaks Spanish to the kids and Meei speaks Chinese to the kids and the kids respond in Spanish to their dad and Chinese to their mom and English at school and I’m sorry for all the exclamation points but this is so impressive to an American who took 6 years of French class and forgot everything! Holy smokes. We were and continue to be incredibly impressed by these trilingual kids and their parents. Such a cool family. The best part of our job is meeting people from all over the world and hearing about their experiences. So glad this family got to be our clients this year!

Switzerland+Italy // Personal Post.

Back in April we shot a ridiculously fabulous wedding in Positano, Italy and super fun Vespa-filled engagement session in Rome. Prior to those shoots, we traveled around a bit in Switzerland and Italy for two weeks and took a bunch of pictures (and 24 hours in London). It seems like forever ago. 2016 was just beginning to suck then. We found out that Prince had died while watching the news at the train station in Venice around midnight. I also still had longer dark hair (it’s currently about three inches long and blonde or purple depending on which day you see me), England was still part of the EU, and Toblerone still had all of its chocolate (thank goodness). So let’s take a trip down our European memory lane back to the beginning of 2016 when we were blissfully unaware of the horrors that awaited us.

Places pictured: Zürich, Bern, Lauterbrunnen, Interlaken, Zermatt, Montreux, Venice, Rome, Pompeii, Positano, London.