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Deziree and Jon are getting married TODAY! I am happy to report that this is the only wedding I have ever shot that will occur in two different years. Deziree is the definition of impeccable taste and her fabulous coordinator Tara Wilson has developed a reputation in Dallas as the event expert for a very good reason, so I can only imagine how breathtaking their wedding this evening will be. I’m happy to be ending 2009 – the best year yet for yours truly – and ringing in 2010 – which is poised to be even better – with Deziree and Jon, and happy to be sharing their engagement session at Again & Again, a posh furniture resale shop in Dallas. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

Julie and Colin are fun and beautiful and a blast to hang out with. Julie has a great sense of style, Colin has great taste in engagement rings, and together they’re pretty much ideal clients. I loved getting to explore new territory shooting with them in historic downtown Grapevine, checking out the wine bar where they hang out, and generally enjoying ourselves. Can’t wait to photograph their wedding next year in Odessa!

Sometimes being a little delayed on my blog postings is a blessing in disguise.. In this case, I’m currently shooting 3-4 sessions a week, and unfortunately, because of the cold weather most of them have a kind of dark, bare, wintery feel to them.  It was such a breath of fresh air to relive Jamie and Garrett’s engagement session, which is about as sunny and happy and summery as it gets.  I absolutely love the feel of this session, which was held at Discovery Green park in the midst of downtown Houston.  You just can’t look at all these bright colors and the big bold balloons and their adorable dog and not smile!  I also love that Jamie has quite possibly the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen – flawless, people! – and that they were both brave enough to jump in the splash park at the end of the session! Here are a few of my favorites from their shoot:

Thanksgiving in my world is about three things:  food, family, and football.  Every year we all gather together and feast on a buffet of turkey, corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, hominy, cranberry sauce, and warm fresh rolls.  After we stuff ourselves, we waddle over to the couch and flop down to sleep off the tryptophan and wait for our two annual Thanksgiving football games to begin.  The first, naturally, is our home team, the Dallas Cowboys.  Every year our ‘boys play on Turkey Day, and every year we don our blue and silver pom poms and cheer for America’s Team.  The second game is a recent addition to the Thanksgiving roster – my alma mater, Texas A&M.  Traditional my Aggies have played t.u. (what Aggies call the University of Texas) on T+1 (the day after Thanksgiving) but recently they moved the game to Thanksgiving proper, so we got a double dose of football.  Although my Ags came out on the wrong end of the game clock this year – Aggies never lose, we just run out of time, and that couldn’t have been more true than this year – we played an amazing game and fought valiantly until the very end.  In honor of the hard work of my Aggie boys this year, I’m dedicating this week to the Aggie Family.  To start with, I’ve got an engagement session that happened in the same place as the Thanksgiving Day game – College Station!

Marcy and Kyle are a favorite in the Reeves-Gulledge household.  We love Kyle because he’s a real American hero, serving our country in the United States Army.  Having attended A&M, which was once a military school and continues to have very strong ties to the armed forces and civil service, I have a special place in my heart for all the people who sacrifice years of their lives to serve America, and Kyle is a true hero in my eyes.  Marcy is a meteorologist for KTBS in Shreveport, LA, and she happens to be the person that Jason’s family watches every night on the news to get their weather report.  I’m so pumped to be able to work with these guys on their wedding photos, and even more pumped that we got to shoot at one of my favorite places on the planet!  Here are some of my favorites:

We began the day at the Academic Building, a gorgeous old building that is the traditional favorite for photos.







No Aggie photoshoot would be complete without a trip to Northgate, the bar district of Aggieland, where every good Aggie spends his Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.







Finally, we took a chance on a dream.. Kyle and Marcy were desperate to get a few shots at Kyle Field, but that’s much easier said than done.  Luck was on our side, and we managed to slip in for a few quick shots!  I’m pretty sure there are going to be some very jealous Ags after this post!





We finished up at Fish Pond, another Aggie Tradition.  During every Aggie’s senior year, they take part in Elephant Walk, where all the seniors link arms and walk through campus together to get one last view of their alma mater.  Elephant Walk concludes with a hop into Fish Pond, and Marcy and Kyle were brave enough to relive the moment!

Next up, I’ve got the most Aggie wedding you will EVER see, complete with over $35,000 worth of Aggie Rings!

My post today serves three unique purposes.  First of all, it gives all of you a chance to meet my one and only sibling, my big sister Candy.  Candy was the oldest of all the cousins, so for several years she ruled the roost as the center of attention not only with our parents but with all the uncles and aunts and grandparents, as well.  And, as Candy is the classic overachiever, she deserved it – she’s a fantastic dancer, bilingual, a straight A student her entire life, worked several jobs in college even though she had tons of scholarships, and has two degrees from a very prestigious university, not to mention that she is incredibly crafty and always has some kind of new artistic project going on.  Then I came along and ruined everything, and she’s never forgiven me for it!

The second purpose today is to introduce Tom and Candy to the world.  Because they work together, Tom and Candy have had to keep their relationship private for a long, long time.  Very few people know that these guys are even a couple, but they finally got clearance from their office, so this is like their big “coming out” party!  SURPRISE!! I, for one, am really excited about the pending nuptials. Tom and Candy have been good friends for 14 years, and Tom helped Candy get through some really rough times in her life. There’s no one that can make her smile quite like Tom, and I’m so excited to be able to call him my brother-in-law pretty soon!

Finally, it gives me a chance to show off the engagement session I shot for them back in September.  Candy is the ultimate Texan, obsessed with all things Texas-related, so it seemed only natural that we shoot her session at the Texas State Fair.

The Marie Gabrielle is one of the my absolute favorite places to shoot, October is my favorite time of the year to shoot, and nice people are my favorite kind of people to shoot, so you can imagine how excited I am for the wedding of Christina and John (two uber-nice people) at the Marie Gabrielle in October.  I even got a bonus surprise when they asked me to shoot their engagement session there, as well!  Here are a few of my favorites from the session.  I tried something a little new – posting them in random order rather then sequential – I hope y’all enjoy it!

Simon and Autumn have one of the coolest how-we-met stories I’ve ever heard. Simon, who is British, is an amazing tennis player and played at an international level in college. Autumn, on the other hand, is a tennis fan herself, and was in an organization at Texas A&M called the Thirty Loves, an athletic support group that helped out A&M’s collegiate tennis programs in various ways. One day Simon just happened to play in a tournament at A&M, where he was promptly heckled by a few inebriated fans in the stands. Autumn decided to go over to him after the match and apologize for the not-so-hospitable treatment, and they struck up a conversation. As fate would have it, Simon was living and working in Bath, and Autumn was going to visit Bath a few months later. They swapped numbers and decided to meet up, and once they did, they knew they had something special. Several international visas, overseas plane flights, and long-distance phone calls, they were engaged! For the engagement session, we decided to stick to familiar territory and shot at a gorgeous public tennis court in Highland Park. Here are some of my favorites: