There was a 100% gluten free cake at this wedding (carrot cake, yum!) that I could eat, but that wasn’t even the best part. The best part was the honey badger cake toppers. They are sharing a snake. The catering staff stood around and all made guesses as to what sort of animal they were. “Is that skunk?” “Why do they have a ribbon in their mouth?” Next to the cake sat a stuffed honey badger, a gift from their friend, who walked by and told me, “He says inappropriate things. He came with a parental advisory sticker.”

Monica and Graham became our clients at some point last year when we bonded over our gluten allergy and invited them over for gluten-free pizza and Woodchuck cider. We’ve forced our friendship upon them ever since and get together for pizza when we’re all not busy. They exploded Mentos and Diet Coke in their engagement session with us and have since bought a cat that they named Tesla. They’re a lot smarter than we are but they don’t hold it against us. They had an awesome wedding at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences surrounded by sciencey things and dinosaurs and honey badgers and lived happily ever after.

Date: December 15, 2012

Monica’s Occupation: Perpetual student (PhD candidate, Environmental Toxicology at NC State)

Graham’s Occupation: Continuous student (PhD candidate, Particle Physics at NC State)

How You Met: North Carolina Governor’s School during high school

Interesting Bride Fact: Played the bassoon in middle and high school. Fact: it’s the coolest instrument ever. Look it up.

Interesting Groom Fact: Has an irrational fear of being hit by a meteorite.

Honeymoon Location: Big island of Hawaii

Ceremony and Reception Location: North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences // Raleigh, NC

Officiant: Rev. Robin Renteria

DJ: DJ Stephen Scott Professional Entertainment // Rob

Florist: Catering Works // Joe Barnes

Cake: The Celiac Cakery // Noreen Fitzmaurice

Catering: Catering Works

Hair: Alter Ego Hair Salon

Makeup: Belle Trachtenberg

Honey Badger Cake Toppers: Bonjour Poupette (Etsy)

At Kathy and Andrew’s wedding two weekends go, I asked Andrew for his wedding ring to photograph and he asked, “Do we have to supply our own plastic dinosaurs?” Coincidentally, I had a plastic dinosaur in my camera bag from Brooke and Red’s Jurassic engagement session earlier this year that I never took out (because hey, you never know when you might need a plastic dinosaur). So I used the plastic dinosaur again for Kathy and Andrew’s ring shots, incorporating Brooke and Red’s love for dinosaurs into other clients’ weddings because they would want it that way… spreading the dinosaur joy around the city of Raleigh.

And there was no dinosaur joy greater than Brooke and Red’s wedding. Brooke, who found us before she was actually engaged and then worked around our availability because she is AWESOME, said at least twice that I heard, “We are having the best wedding ever!” This was said in a very surprised yet extremely contented way as she was so happy and beautiful and the weather was gorgeous and cool but not cold. Red was also very happy himself, but in all of the times I have ever interacted with Red, he is nothing but 100% smiles 100% of the time. Always. So he looked as happy as he normally does, which is really, really happy… presumably because Brooke is with him being adorable and lovely.

There were plastic dinosaurs on some cakes and a guest book that was a dinosaur book and dinosaur beer cozies. The cake cutting was watched over by a giant dinosaur looming over the crowd with a (fake) gross leg wound. It was awesome.

Date: November 17, 2012

First Song: “It Had To Be You” – Frank Sinatra

Brooke’s Occupation: Attorney

Red’s Occupation: Owner of 1-800-Water Damage of Raleigh

How You Met: Match.com!

Interesting Bride Fact: Brooke speaks Japanese.

Interesting Groom Fact: Red has webbed toes.

Honeymoon Location: Charleston, SC right after the wedding and then Italy in Spring 2013

Ceremony Location: Fairmont United Methodist Church // Raleigh, NC

Reception Location: North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences // Raleigh, NC

Officiant: Rev. Dr. James F. Bernhardt

DJ: GO DJ Entertainment // Stephen Holt

Florist: Harris Teeter // Beth Bailey

Cake: Whole Foods

Caterer: Rocky Top Hospitality

Hair/Makeup: Hair Color Xperts

Coordinator: Lewanna Stout

 

Hello, old friends and new!

We are so pleased and excited to announce our new website, our new branding, and our new status as an “official” husband and wife wedding photography team! Man, that’s a lot of new stuff.

First, we’d like to thank Dapper Paper for doing an amazing job creating our new logo and design! Previously our logo was simply colored text, so we decided it was time to have someone do it right. Chris and Elizabeth did just that, taking all of our ideas and demands and creating something amazing for us. They were fabulous about everything the entire time, and we’re faaairly certain that we’re probably not the easiest clients to work with since we’re in a visual field and are slightly demanding. But they never complained and got everything exactly right. High-fives to Dapper Paper!

So let’s answer your question: why the bats?

Well, when we thought about a logo, we wanted to incorporate 2 of something in order to represent that there are two of us. Two cats. Two monsters. Two jellyfish. Frankly, we weren’t sure. Secretly Carolyn wanted it to be two bats, but she didn’t tell Geoff. Secretly Geoff wanted it to be two bats, but didn’t tell Carolyn. Eventually one of us (we can’t remember which) brought up the suggestion of bats to the other. The conversation went something like this:  “I thought about bats, but thought you might think it was weird!” and the other person said, “ME TOO!” And bats it was. So again, why the bats? Carolyn’s always liked bats because she’s always thought they were cute and fuzzy (weird, we know). She used to watch for them at night all the time when she was a little kid (and still does). Both of us have always thought there was something super cool about nocturnal animals that can fly and are a little creepy but cute at the same time. And both of us really love Halloween. We like it so much that our wedding was Halloween themed and had adorable fuzzy bats hanging from the rafters at Artspace during our first dance.

So bats it is! Although we didn’t want Halloween bats (let’s not give anyone the creeps here, folks). We wanted more of the summer-night type of bats. We have a lot of gorgeous outdoor weddings in the summer under the moon and stars, and we thought it would be kind of a homage to that too. There are a lot of photographers who use birds or owls in their logo, and bats were also kind of the antithesis of that… identifying us and our photography style as a little bit… weird. Animal friendly, sure, but maybe a little off. Which we certainly are. :)

Dapper Paper took care of the logo and design work, while Carolyn crafted some of the other paper products involved in the packaging, redid PDF designs, contract designs, and a million other rebranding things. Geoff took care of the website design (with Dapper Paper taking care of the sidebar) and recoded all of it! It took a monumental effort and a lot of late nights and DVRing Breaking Bad because we didn’t have time to watch it (the biggest travesty of rebranding), but we’re super happy with the end result. We’ll be posting a picture of our new (and freaking awesome) packaging once we get all the materials in and ship someone’s wedding stuff out. :)

The new website is a blog site and has our blog posts built right in, as opposed to a separate portfolio and separate blog as we had before. We updated the pricing to be even simpler than before (we believe simple is good), and have thrown our testimonials and other stuff under the “about” link. The “categories” to the left hand side are the blog categories. The “favorites” link on the sidebar will lead you to what was previously our portfolio, although a much more slimmed down version (since the blog is right there with all of our most recent stuff). There’s weddings and un-weddings. So what does this mean?

We’ve decided to go into a direction of exclusively weddings, engagements, bridals, and couples. That’s what we love, and those are the types of clients we love. No worries, we’ll continue to do “outside category” work (such as pets and families) for people who are already our clients and friends, we’re just branding ourselves as purely weddings now. Mainly because we feel like we thrive with couples and that’s what we want to concentrate on… and babies make us nervous.

Along with the new decision to advertise as just weddings, we’ve also decided to officially become a husband and wife team (despite the name staying the same… sorry, Geoff)! We’ve been working as a team for some time (since always, really, since Geoff’s always done our website work), but now about half of our clients’ wedding pictures come from Geoff, and half from Carolyn. We shoot separately for the first half of the day, and have different strengths during the second half of the day that we concentrate on independently. So there really are two of us shooting different parts of your day equally… and we are married… so that totally constitutes a husband and wife team. Winning! Geoff now has a totally separate e-mail that you can use to contact him on the contact page, although Carolyn still handles all of the business end of things and the editing. But you can e-mail Geoff if you just want to give him a hard time, or maybe talk about baseball or video games. He’s up for answering those types.

So we hope that you guys are digging the new look and the new changes! It’s weird, yeah, but so are we. And if you’re reading this, you probably already know that by now. :)

Love,

Carolyn and Geoff