When Lauri first contacted me about shooting her wedding, she claimed that it would be held in one of the most picturesque settings she'd ever seen.

She was totally right; it was beautiful. The small (and I mean small!) wedding was held outdoors at the Goodstone Inn & Estate in Middleburg, Virginia. The weather reports that week made us nervous, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day.

Here are a few of my favorite shots. This first one shows the entire wedding and shows our fantastic backdrop.


After the ceremony, we walked around the area for a while and took some great, casual and fun portraits.


I know this is kind of a weird shot to end this blog post on, but I love it. Lauri's little niece kept giving her handfuls of gravel to which Lauri would be surprised and grateful, as you can see. I thought it was really cute.


Lauri & Russ: thanks for having me and congrats!

A couple weekends ago, I had the opportunity to shoot some family portraits for Heather and her family. We met up at her mother and soon-to-be father-in-law's home. Their home is surrounded by farms and woodlands and was absolutely beautiful. I must've seen ten or twelve deer as I was driving there. We were also lucky to have perfect weather for shooting.

We started out with a few group shots: first in the gazebo on the deck and then in the backyard overlooking the rolling farmland out back.


After that, we walked around front and shot a few smaller group shots. A couple sets of siblings:


And then, a couple couples:


Ok, three couples :


Anna & I really hit off. She was a great model and we had a lot of fun. Here she is sitting the front steps. When it was time for me to go, she blocked the door. She was totally cute.


Thanks to Heather and the fam!

We met up in Georgetown for Erin & Randy's engagement session. It could not have been a more beautiful day and we had a good time walking around, taking some nice, casual shots.

We started out along the canal. I had walked around the day before to scope out a couple locations and had found the canal almost abandoned. Not this day, however. It was crawling with people and we had to wait a few times to let people walk by.


Then we walked up on the street on our way down towards the Potomac River:



Lastly, we walked up this tiny, steep little street with several cool skinny houses on one side. I love the colors in this shot:



Thanks, Erin & Randy for letting me shoot your engagement photos!

The day of Kirsten & Lorin's wedding turned out to be the one day that the remnants of hurricane Hannah decided to dump several inches of rain on the DC area. But, if she was trying to ruin the wedding day, Hannah failed miserably!

Everything turned out great and the weather started to clear up by the end of the ceremony. Here are a few of my favorite shots for the day:

First, a couple details: the beautiful purple bouquet and Kirsten's gorgeous dress.


I'm mainly including this getting ready shot to be able to tell the following little story. After asking for a curling iron and receiving three (or possibly four), there was much fiddling with Kirsten's hair. Kirsten's sister stepped up and worked some hair-curlin' magic which promted Kirsten to exclaim 'you're a genius!' Without missing a beat, her sister replied 'well, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.' It was so quick; we all burst out laughing. I enjoyed this so much, that I told my wife about it, but she hasn't seen the commercials. Oh well.


I was told/warned that Kirsten's dad was quite the shutterbug. I grabbed this shot of him grabbing a shot of Kirsten:


One of the side-effects of the rain was a slight change of plans regarding Kirsten's entrance. The plan was for her to go around the outside of the building and enter through the door at the back of the chapel. Due to the rain, she couldn't go outside, so one of the Priests came up with the idea to just have everyone bow their head in silent prayer while Kirsten snuck down the center aisle. This shot is Kirsten waiting to sneak:


Here's a couple from the ceremony; exchanging vows and exchanging rings:


A couple portraits outside the church:


...and a couple more at the reception. As you can see, the weather decided to shape up:


Lastly, here are a few from the reception:


There are several more photos available on my flickr stream.

Congratulations to Kirsten & Lorin! And, thanks so much for letting me photograph your wedding; I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm running a little behind on blogging Kirsten & Lorin's wedding from last weekend. I'll have a full blog post ready tomorrow or Tuesday, but in the meantime, here's a quick peek with this shot that really jumped out at me: