I’m home from DC and finally have time to start sorting through the hundreds and hundreds of photos I took over the past week that I’ve been too busy to glance over. I admit I immediately honed in on the wedding photos because I wasn’t sure if I had captured anything worth showing. I was running around most of the day trying to make myself as useful as possible and alternating between using my Canon 50D and the Super8mm camera I had brought along as well. I did get a lucky a few times though, and below are some of my favorite shots.

The bride looking all dewy with her hair and makeup freshly done.

Who said baby’s breath can’t be chic?

Love “the moment” when a girl slips on a once-in-a-lifetime dress and becomes a bride.

The groom working on his speech.

I had about 30 seconds alone with Christiana in good light and grabbed a few portraits while I could.

Their vows were incredibly touching. I was truly moved.

The cake buffet was so beautiful. So so so so beautiful. I can’t stop saying it. Beautiful.

It should be no surprise to anyone that I think the cake buffet is the best wedding trend ever. A trend that should be embraced by all brides that plan to invite me to their wedding.

They made their entrance into the reception with their arms around each other.

And I’ll end with a very sweet first dance shot.

I’ll have another post filled with pictures of the bees (D’orsay, Avocado, Cupcake, Tiramisu, Champagne, Cloud, Star, Candy Corn, Tulip, and Peony were all there at once!), you’re going to love the dancing shots! (And don’t worry ladies, I’ve filtered through them to make sure I only show the world your BEST side )

Tomorrow I’m meeting up with a fellow LDS photographer who just moved here from Utah. She takes beautiful pictures like the one below and I secretly want to be just like her. Except now I wrote it on the blog so it’s not a secret anymore. Her name is Bethany Jackman and she actually knows Kelli Nicole from BYU. It’s a funny little Mormon world we have.

I would post a picture of her but someone recently stole her identity and copied all her photos and pretended to be her on their own blog. It was incredibly creepy and now she has disabled right-clicking on her personal blog, which I completely understand. So maybe I’ll take her picture tomorrow so you can see how darling she is. Or maybe she’ll let me post a link to her personal blog, but I’m not going to do that yet since she just had her identity stolen.

I’ve told TH many times that I’m incredibly excited about this meeting because I’m secretly hoping that we as a couple will become best friends with her and her husband. They are both LDS. They plan on moving around a lot. She’s a photographer, she’s having a baby, she loves blogging, she has a photography blog and a personal blog. So far all I know about her husband is that he graduated from BYU with a Masters in Information Systems, but that just so happens to be the exact same degree that TH earned as well. This is a couple match made in heaven, right?

TH has been rather skeptical about the idea of finding a couple for us to be BFF with because the two of us are so different. The women I click with have spouses that just don’t do it for him. The men he likes most will have a spouse that just doesn’t have interests that line up with mine. I think this is a thing that all newlywed couples struggle with, finding not just one friend, but a matched pair. Yes, girls nights are possible. And he can spend time with the guys. And we have been to dinner parties and game nights and gone out to movies with couples, but that connection between wife&wife and husband&husband hasn’t been easy to find.

Sunday night we found the first couple that we both think will be a good fit for us. She loves photography and I’m encouraging her to launch her own business in the near future. I want her to design a website for me and teach me about couponing. He wants to be retired yesterday, just like my husband, which was reason enough for TH to want to talk to him all the time. The wife and I are thinking that getting them together might not have been such a good idea, since they both seemed to spend the majority of their time talking about how to make our grocery, household and personal spending budgets even smaller than they already are.

Tomorrow I’m hoping I’ll meet up with the wife of BFF couple #2. No pressure for Bethany or anything.

Last night we met up with some friends for some Mile High Ice Cream Pie at Champps. I still can’t believe each couple attempted to finish their own (I was fine with the idea of sharing one for the whole table, but I was overruled.

We love this couple, and don’t see them nearly enough. Both TH and I love to hang out with them because of their awesome personalities and because the guys both work for the same company. It’s nice when the other couple you are coordinating with understand things like husbands who have no idea what time they will get home from work (both guys got home at around 7:30 last night). They also understand what it’s like to only get to spend 3 or 4 days out of the week with your spouse.

Look how enormous this is! That Husband and I finished about 3/4 of it. After going on and on about calorie counting I’ve set myself up to look like a nutrition nazi, and I think that this shows I believe that when you stop punishing yourself for eating “bad” things, you can still be happy (and healthy). That annoying phrase “everything in moderation” is so true. I go out to get Mile High Ice Cream Pie, enjoy myself, talk to my friends for 3 hours, and don’t spend the rest of the night in agony over my indulgence (or the next day either). Why? Because I know that I don’t eat like this on a regular basis.

You can think of this as my “Vera Wang” for the season.

If you aren’t into weddings, you probably don’t know about Elizabeth Anne Designs, one of my favorite wedding blogs. Well, now you don’t have to be into weddings to know about them because they just launched Elizabeth Anne Designs: Living. To be honest, I feel like they secretly launched this blog for me since I am so desperately in need of advice on all things life and home related (you can feel free to think it was for you as well, for various other reasons).

I have a secret to tell you: I am secret best friends with Elizabeth Anne Designs. You might not believe it now, but I’ll prove the deepness of our friendship soon (well, the proving will probably happen on That Bride since it is wedding related).

Why should you hop over and then subscribe? (Please, anyone let me know if you are not understanding the concept of subscribing to RSS feeds using a subscription service like google reader yet, I would love to convert more people like my friend Megan!)

Because you can learn about artists like David Berkeley. I’ve already added one of his albums to my itunes shopping cart.

And you can start dreaming of collecting china to hang on your wall. I do have the perfect wall for this concept.

Are there any other “nesting” blogs like this I should know about?

*All images from EAD living