I try really hard not to play favorites with my clients… I’m extremely, EXTREMELY lucky to have some amazing clients that are kind, friendly, understanding, appreciative, and generally awesome in every way.  I’m proud of the fact that I’ve never yet had a bridezilla – knock on wood – and I’m blessed to really enjoy every wedding I shoot.  That said… When a couple tells you they want to fly you out to Paris and Venice to do some portrait sessions, and they happen to talk your boyfriend into coming along and proposing while he’s there.. Well, that’s a pretty tough act to beat.  Abby and Zach will always have a special place in my heart, and I truly loved getting to know them more during our travels throughout Europe.  You can’t ask for two better friends than these guys, something I’m sure their bridesmaids and groomsmen would echo in a heartbeat!  I’m also very thankful that they’re both completely gorgeous and photograph so well!  Here are some highlights from their Paris and Venice Day After sessions.

We got started at the Tuileries, a garden near the Louvre, and eventually made our way through the Louve courtyard and to the Arc de Triomphe du Carroussel. It was absolutely freezing but Abby was a total trooper in her little strapless dress and high heels!











As the sun set and the temperatures plummeted we hopped on the Metro (followed by more than a few strange looks) and managed to snag a few quick shots at the Eiffel Tower before the snow and wind got the better of us.



We finished the session on a high note and headed back into the warmth of our hotel. After a few days of sightseeing and a very interesting overnight train ride, we rose at the break of dawn to get things started in St. Mark’s Square in Venice.





















I love Abby’s accessories in these shots. She had actually picked them up the previous day at Murano, a tiny island off the coast of Venice famous for its glass (which they use to make incredible and very pricey stemware, jewelry, chandeliers, and statues).



We finished the photos off with a really neat tradition. If you ever travel to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, you’ll see hundreds of padlocks along the river, with initials scribbled onto the sides. As legend goes, if you write your initials and your beloved’s initials onto a lock, attach the lock to a city fixture, then toss the key into the river, you’re destined to be together forever. Abby and Zach loved this romantic idea, so they incorporated it into their wedding by handing out locks to their guests as favors. They also brought along padlocks for every city they were going to visit. As we stopped by a bridge on the Grand Canal, they decided to attach their lock there and toss the key into the famous waterway!

A & Z, Jason and I will always love you guys for giving us such a great opportunity to be your honeymoon paparazzi and for being part of such a special event in our lives. I’m so happy to have you as clients, and we’re both thrilled to call you both friends! Congratulations on your fabulous wedding, we know you guys are a perfect pair!

This is one of the rare Day After sessions I have done on the actual Day After.. Most of the time, the bride and groom are so exhausted from the session that they simply want to enjoy their first day of marriage relaxing, or heading off to their honeymoon, and we end up doing the Day After session a few weeks later. However, Rebecca and Erik are no strangers to early mornings, so they decided to brave the morning after, and I’m so glad we did! Despite the threat of rain and what must have been 600% humidity, we managed to get some lovely images throughout Jefferson. Here are some of my favorites:

I wish I could take credit for the second shot but it was all Kirby’s idea.. I set up the first shot, and Kirby decided that he wanted to be a part of the fun, too!

I can’t say this enough – I LOVE DAY AFTER SESSIONS! They are easily my favorite thing to photograph.  It is everything I love about bridal sessions, engagement sessions, and weddings all rolled up into one.  I especially love it when a couple as much style and personality as Jenny and Casey.  I could photograph these two all the live long day and never get sick of looking at their beautiful faces and how loving they are with each other.  Posting this session actually makes me a little sad because I won’t have any excuse to put them back on the blog after this! Here are some of my favorites from their Day After session at the Old McKinney Cotton Mill.

There are so many benefits to doing a Day After session.. For starters, you don’t have to spend much/any time getting these photos on the wedding day, so you get to your reception faster and don’t have to leave your guests waiting for as long. You can also go to whatever location you want, and it gives me much more freedom to pose you because I don’t have to be so worried about getting dirt on the dress or the tux. We’re not rushed at all, so we can take time to try new and unique things and get a much more diverse collection of images for you to choose from. Even though the session is called a Day After session, I rarely do them on the actual day after the wedding. Jenny and Casey’s session was done a week after their wedding, and many couples choose to wait until after they return from their honeymoon and have had time to relax and unwind from the flurry of wedding activity. I’ve even had a few couples choose to do their Day After session during their honeymoon – this January I’ll be traveling with one of my couples to Paris and Venice to do their session! If you’re interested in getting gorgeous images of you and your spouse-to-be, let me know!

Okay, so it’s sort of a Day Of Session.. Since Mark and Jaclyn’s wedding ended fairly early in the day, we went ahead and did part of their Day After session as soon as the reception ended. It happened to fall at the perfect time of day, just before sunset, where the light is the most beautiful. Since Kelly and I didn’t know the area at all, I had to rely on Mark’s amazing-photo-op-location-scouting abilities for our locations, and he certainly knew how to pick them!

Our first major stop was in a little town called Helen, where everything is German-inspired, from the food to the architecture.
Jaclyn is definitely not the type of girl who loves to be the center of attention.. Wandering around in the middle of a busy city square wearing a huge wedding dress was not exactly her cup of tea, but we are so proud of her for toughing it out. Hopefully the photos are worth all the unwanted attention!
After scarring poor Jackie for life, we managed to find a secluded park where we could get some more romantic shots. I love parks!





The next morning we headed to an old abandoned building that we had seen on the side of the road. I love old worn-out warehouses almost as much as I love solid color walls!

Then Kelly spotted an amazing parking lot filled with old vintage gasoline pumps.. What a cool find! We didn’t stay long for fear of someone getting tetanus, but we did get a couple of really awesome shots.

The goal of this shot was to capture the lovebirds surrounded by “tree monsters”… Don’t ask.
Finally we finished the day at a small airport tucked away in the forest. We nearly got run over by a couple of planes trying to take off. Whoops!

Jaclyn and Mark, I cannot thank you enough for allowing Kelly and I to photograph your awesome wedding. We fell in love with the both of you, and I just wish you guys were closer so we could hang out more! If you’re ever in Texas, you know who to call!

Kelly Niemann, thanks so much for taking so many amazing photos and being the perfect second shooter. You’re awesome! Go check her out!

Dear Nikole and Chris’ parents,

If seeing steamy, sexy, awesomely hot photos of your two little darlings makes you uncomfortable… You should probably stop reading right now! I tried to keep it G-rated, but.. well.. newlyweds will be newlyweds!

XOXO,
Stacy

Day After sessions are, hands down, my favorite thing in the entire world. No contest. One of main reasons I am a photographer is because I love making people feel beautiful and capturing that beauty in images, and I feel that everyone is at their most beautiful when they are dressed up all fancy-like with the person they love most in the world, which is exactly what happens in a Day After session. It also gives people a chance to be totally narcissistic and fill the walls of their home with amazing portraits of themselves, which I of course fully support.

As I mentioned before, I absolutely adore Nikole and Chris for many reasons, but I especially love them for taking some time out of their honeymoon to wander around Puerta Plata with me and roll around in the sand and water. Check out some of my favorites:

Nikole and Chris, thank you first of all for being so easy on the eyes, making my job ridiculously easy, and thank you for being so great to me and allowing me to have a blast with you both during your wedding and honeymoon. I’m just sad that you’re so far away now :( I guess I will just have to make the trek up north to come visit!

Random side note: I am seeing a lot of hits to this post via the NAPP forums, and a friend on those boards informed me that a lot of you all are discussing this post in regards to use of actions and plug-ins.  I want you guys to know that virtually every image in this post, aside from the B&W/Sepia images, is pretty much SOOC, with minimal tweaking in Lightroom. In fact, only one action was used, and that is Totally Rad Action’s Old Skool, used on the last pair of images in this post. In the past I have been a big fan of actions, but these days I am leaning more towards the school of leaving images mostly as-is, and letting their beauty speak for itself. In the future, if you have comments or thoughts about my images, I would love to hear them in the comments section of this blog. Thanks! It’s always great to know that my work is inspiring discussion :)

I love, love love love, LOVE, loooooooooooooooooooooove, L O V E, love Day After sessions.

I cannot express enough how much I love them. Not only is it a chance to spend some quality time with your new spouse, it’s also an opportunity to get some of the most amazing, incredible images that your friends will oooooh and ahhhhhh over for the rest of your life.

Darbi, being an amazing wedding photographer herself, knows the value of a Day After session, so when I traveled to Omaha for her wedding a few weeks ago, it was pretty much a given that Darbi, Neil, and I would be setting out into the Nebraska wilderness for some cool shots of the newly minted husband and wife.

Check out these images…

The next two photos might be my favorite photos I have EVER taken!

Aren’t these two INCREDIBLE?? Don’t you wish you had photos like this with the man/woman you love?? I sure do. I love these so much I want to print them out and hang them up all over my house and pretend like I am in them. Everyone deserves to look and feel this beautiful – and to have photographic proof!

If you’re getting married any time soon, or even if you already are married, ask me about doing a Day After session. Typically they are done the morning or afternoon after the wedding, but they can be done any time. I even had one couple schedule a session in between their morning ceremony and evening reception. We can also do a destination session, and fly out to a location that means something to you – New York, Napa Valley, New Orleans, Paris, Venice, you name it. If you have an exotic vacation planned this year or next year and want to get some gorgeous photos of you and your love while you’re there, let me know and we’ll see what we can do! :)

Okay, enough gushing about Day After sessions.. What can I say, I really really really love doing them. :) If you want to see more of Darbi & Neil, the lovely Lara Adkins has some of her shots on her blog, as well. Tomorrow I have some aaawwweeeesome news for Humpdates, and I’ll have Darbi & Neil’s wedding photos, too. You don’t want to miss the photos (and stories) from this wedding. There’s so much to show I may have to split it up over two days!

You know your clients love you when they let you do THIS to them :)

When Alex mentioned to me she might be interested in doing a Fearless Bridal session, you better believe I JUMPED at the chance! I have been wanting to do one for so long, but Southern brides are not so easy to convince. Since I had to come down to Houston for a weekend to get some sessions done anyway, I decided to stay an extra day and take the new Mrs. Luton down to the Kemah boardwalk for one more day of fun in her beautiful wedding gown. We even convinced Nick to join us!

Thanks to Alex (and High Fashion Fabrics) I managed to cross one thing off my Wish List – a birdcage veil!!

Then it was time to hop in the water!  The sun was setting and the tide was rising very quickly, so for Alex’s safety we didn’t stay in the water too long.  This girl was a trooper!  The water was smelly and gross and there were all sorts of strange creatures floating around, but like a true supermodel, she just worked it!

Love love looooooove this one!  My new favorite shot of Alex :)

Then we had a little fun with car headlights.. A bit dangerous, but so worth it!

One last shot before our very cold, wet, smelly ride home ;)

If you’re interested in doing a Fearless Bridal session, let me know!  Basically it’s just like a bridal session, except we go somewhere a little more edgy and urban, and we can do all sort of fun poses with you without worrying about getting the dress dirty.  If you want to do a session but you don’t want to totally ruin your dress, don’t worry, we can do that!  Most of the time, the dress is good as new after a nice professional cleaning.  You paid all that money for your dress and you look HOT in it – shouldn’t you get the most out of it?

A Day After session is very similar to a Fearless Bridal session, except we bring your new husband along for the fun!  He doesn’t have to rent a tux again – he can follow Nick’s example above and just stick with some nice khaki slacks and a loose white button-up shirt for a more casual feel.  This is a great chance to get some gorgeous romantic shots of the two of you, especially if you weren’t able to get them on your wedding day for whatever reason.

Alex and Nick, thanks so much for spending the night with me and posing for some more photos.  You’re both way too hot for your own good, you can pose for me anytime!  Tell little Stormy I said hi! :)