Now that our summer weddings are giving us a chance to come up for air, we wanted to feature Dan and Megin’s rustic chic Pickering Barn wedding in proper detail!

Dress
Megin wanted to surprise Dan with the dress so we hadn’t seen it either.  She rocked her gorgeous vintage inspired gown by Brides by Demetrios in Bellevue.  Oh, and yes, she did leave him speechless!

Dude Duds
This will be no shocker…the groom and his groomsmen were looking dapper thanks to the Men’s Wearhouse.

Officiant
What can we say?  Ray Van Winkle truly is passionate about his work.  Megin and Dan had said they had to pick him because he has been known incorporate Dr. Seuss into vows.  We loved his work but when we saw his website we knew he was “good people” when he said he dressed up as Elvis for a Halloween wedding.

Caterer
When Dan and Megin sat down with us to conceptualize their wedding Dan was beaming about his ONE request – a cheese fountain.  Yes, it was pulled right off the screen from Talladega Nights.  So, the kitsch factor was there but we never expected it to taste so amazing.  Jen’s Catering classed up the cheese fountain.  Their food was amazing as well.

Venue
Pickering Barn is located in Issaquah and serves as a great backdrop for photos.  Its landscaping is lush and there are many trees on the property.  It sports rustic chic details with all the modern amenities.  Construction of the original hay barn dates back to 1896 and the dairy barn was built in 1906.  Dan and Megin’s ceremony was held in the hay barn and the ceremony was in the adjacent dairy barn.  The venue used to host cattle, but now it can accommodate upwards of 400!

Flowers
Rented Elegance did a great job on the flowers and the GINORMOUS hanging  candelabra.  Lets talk twinkle power galore!  The flowers and decorated candles that lined the aisle in the hay barn were gorgeous.  Very vintage and super romantic.  They also helped the family set up all of the table scapes.

DJ
Sound Sational Music provided music and owner Ken served as the MC for the evening.  He announced the first dances, photo booth opening, bouquet and garter toss etc and he kept the party rockin’.  Ken did a great job keeping the wedding festivities on schedule.  As a photographer this is so helpful.

Cakes
There were lots and lots of cakes at this wedding.  The bride and groom’s main cake was done by Mike’s Amazing Cakes in Redmond.  Not only was it beautiful but we snuck a taste as well.  Two thumbs up.  Each table had its own specialty cake.  We’re talking red velvet, raspberry, lemon, chocolate and the list continues.  These individual cakes were baked by 3.14 Bakery in White Center. The bride and groom helped decorate the individual cake stands.

Photobooth
This was our most rockin’ photobooth ever.  Mitzi was busy for 2 hours snapping shots.  Our photobooth experience has grown to include many props.  The most popular seemed to be the pirate hook, silly hats and dollar sign shades.  This was definitely a fun crew.

Wedding Favors
Each table included a decorated white paper bag  to be filled by CANDY!  The candy bar was hopping and had many great treats.  The mini chocolate bars had been painstakingly wrapped with wedding color paper and adornments.  Let us just say that the kids (and adults) were hopped up on sugar and loving that candy bar.

The wedding was fabulous and the vintage details were so fitting for the venue.  Dan and Megin had been collecting mason jars almost since they got engaged.  The candles that were placed in the jars as well as the fresh lavendar sprigs that decorated the tables really helped to tie everything together.

Congratulations Dan and Megin.  May you live long and prosper!

Set the “Way Back Machine” to 1976 when I got my first airplane book at a little book store in Encinitas, CA right after my dad took me to see Monty Python’s Holy Grail at the La Paloma Theater.  I think it was the drawing of a one of the Flying Tiger’s P-40′s that fascinated me, the shark mouth just looked so cool.  I started trying to copy the drawing, over and over again.  I loved that book and while it’s a little worse for the wear I still have it.  This was the spark that would change the rest of my life, but at 6 years old I just thought the P-40 looked really cool.

A few years later, I think it was in 6th grade I was in the school library having to find a book to read when I stumbled on a book about the Red Barron and when I went home to start reading it I was hooked.  I finished the book that night and went back the next day to get more history books.  I ended up reading every book the school library having anything to do with WW I & II.  One of my dad’s friends, who was an warbird buff, suggested that I read a couple of other books that weren’t at my school library, so I went down to the Carlsbad City Library to pick up “Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway” & “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”, read them and kept going back for more. Most of my interest focused on the airplanes and this interest never passed.

A couple of summers later (between Jr. High & High School) my dad’s friend, who lived in Fresno at the time, invited me to come up so I could go to a with him to the Madera Air Show.  For the first time in my life I was finally going to be able to see the planes I’d been reading about for the past couple of years.  It was an amazing experience and I hardly minded that it was 110 degres out on the runway!  I was there seeing these planes fly for the first time in my life, experiencing the sound and power of some of the most famous aircraft in the world and there I was with my little Kodak 110 camera borrowed from my grandmother taking the photos that would start it all.

The new obsession was air shows and thankfully I lived in Southern California and was surrounded by military bases, Mirimar NAS, El Toro MCAS, March AFB, Norton AFG, Point Mugu NAS and Edwards AFB all just close enough that I could make my dad drive me and my best friend to all of them with an upgraded camera borrowed from my uncle Dan this time.   I got to see some things I’d never forget.  One year at Mirimar NAS (then home of Top Gun) I watched on as a low flying F-14 pushed just a little too far and broke the sound barrier and managed to shatter the windows of the radio booth that was covering the show.  At Point Mugu in 1983 or ’84 I got to watch famous stunt pilot Art Scholl (who later perished while filming the movie Top Gun) fly an amazing routine in a Rockwell Shrike Commander  (he finished up his routine flying w/o power, did a couple of loops, landed and taxied the plane to the centerline of the air show and made it curtsy as it came to a stop – all without the engines on)!  In 1988 I was at the El Toro Air Show with my uncle when I watched an F/A-18 crash during a demonstration.  The pilot was fine, by the way.

My Junior year of High School is when I finally got a camera (Pentax special that was the Price Club special as a Christmas Present) of my own and the summer between my Junior and Senior year I got to take my first photography class at a local college (the class at my High School was impossible to get into).  I had an amazing teacher who was more interested in helping us develop our style of photography than doing everything exactly by the numbers and I’m SO glad she was my first photography teacher.  If my second teacher may had been my first things might have ended differently for me.  She was clearly checked out and didn’t  know anything other than how to run us through the chapters in a book – boring exercise after boring exercise with no passion or interest in what the students were doing.

My senior year was a rough time, with some crazy family problems that I won’t bother to go into here, but I started working on the school newspaper and yearbook and really poured my energy into the photography in an effort to block out what was going on at home.  I took pictures of my friends at school, my cousins on the weekends and from time to time drove down to Palomar Airport to take pictures of the random planes down there.  My trusty Pentax was stolen out of my car, so I traded my mountain bike for my friends Minolta X700 that I’m now teaching my kids photography with and I bough a Yashica 124g with money earned working for my father.  With my work on the yearbook and newspaper I was really starting to take more and more photos of people and was really enjoying that.  I even did some head shots for a girl at my school who was on one episode of The Wonder Years and I have shots of my classmate Denise Richards (pre-Charlie Sheen drama of course).

So, how did I get from there to here?  I was actually very strongly encouraged by my family to go into photography, but I at the time I felt that if I took something that I loved so much and made it a job I’d end up getting sick of doing it and I really didn’t want to loose the passion for photography.  As a result I had a long series of jobs at camera stores and various other things.  While the jobs changed every couple of years my love for photography was still there.  In about 1999 I was hired by my father-in-law’s company to spend a week traveling around the country taking pictures of their devices that were installed in hospitals.  Suddenly the switch was flipped and when I got back from that trip I started hounding all of the local newspapers to hire me as a photographer.  While I had a job, now as a travel agent, I kept calling all of the editors until one finally had an assignment for me.  I started shooting school sports for a local paper after work and was thrilled to be finally making some money doing photography.  It wasn’t much, but I saved every penny of that money to buy better equipment.  Shortly after 09/11/01 I quit my job as a travel agent and set off on my own, doing contract photography for a sports photography company, working for the paper and picking up portrait shoots.

I was working as a photographer but things changed when my new wife (and my biggest fan) asked what I though about shooting weddings.  Honestly, I’d avoided them with a few exceptions for friends and family and had never really considered being a “wedding photographer”.  It just so happened that at that time one of my best friends was getting married and the friend of a model I’d done some work with was getting married within two weeks of each other.  Mitzi just suggested that I go into shooting with the mindset of seeing if it would be something I’d want to do.  Well, I loved shooting the weddings!  We then changed the business name, started marketing weddings and soon had booked up 15 weddings for the next summer!

Now we’re into our 5th year of shooting weddings and we’re going strong.  This year at Mitzi’s suggestion we opened “Little Black Book” as our boudoir studio and that side of the business has been much more successful than I had expected.  Mitzi told me it would be, don’t know why I doubted her.  She’s a genius!

My parents paid loads for my senior portrait – I say portrait because I only recall seeing one image.  Every moment of my studio session was like torture.  The backdrop scene was a forest with a fake fence prop.  I really didn’t know what was happening.  The photographer was, well, sort of uninterested in his job and I just wanted to escape the cheese factor asap.  Sorry Dad and Mom.

At Firstlight Photography we want our seniors to have FUN.  You have a say – lots of it – in your shoot.  It is simple.  If you feel in control and are having fun it will show in your photos.  Senior portraits are meant to capture a very special moment in time.  We will talk to you about your interests, where you like to hang out, how you spend your time when not in school, if you play sports or are in a band etc.  We like to get to know you so we can create a lifestyle session that helps show who you are – not who your photographer wants you to be (ie that sad farm girl with the fake fence).

We will help prepare you for outfits to bring and will refer you to hair and make-up artists we recommend if you so desire.  We have a whole repertoire of locations we shoot.  We find many new ones based on our seniors’ input.  If you are going for a downtown, urban grunge, graffiti wall, waterfront, rustic barn, decomposing structures, nature vibe or even your high school – we can work it into your shoot.

We also offer a year in the life packages for the senior.  We basically stalk you on three to five shoots and capture you in your natural habitat.  These sessions are lots of fun.  By the end, our seniors are ready to assist any photographer – they really learn the ropes and get an amazing collection of photos.

Your shoot will be fun and you will get to provide input into the session.  We don’t want you to have those sad farm girl pictures too.

Our prices are very affordable and we will create custom packages for you.

Kier was stalked down by the paparazzi at the Bellevue LDS Temple last week.  Actually, one of our second shooters was there for her daughter’s wedding and took some time to haze Kier.  He prefers to be behind the camera and she knows this.  Way to go Dee Dee!  You caught Kier in his natural habitat!

The Bellevue Temple offers a tremendous backdrop for photos.  Firstlight Photography knows the grounds well and has several favorite locations for wedding sessions.  We can help you plan your wedding.  Our LDS Temple Packages start at $500.

These weddings have a touch of whimsy, a DIY / ETSY vibe and lots of sparkle and vintage detail. Candles hanging in lanterns, twinkly lights hung outdoors or shimmering crystals boost sparkle.

Details can include textures like linen, burlap and anything in between. Overall a rustic chic wedding is a mindset. These weddings tend to be low key but don’t skimp on the amazing details.

Looking to establish a wedding color story for your day? You should check out the COLOURlovers! Rustic Chic Weddings Group. This was created by us, but we already have many contributors. It is entirely too fun playing with the colors.

Color by COLOURlovers

Enjoy the baby bumps!  Click on the photo to view a video.

Last year we ended up doing three weddings with her (which is alot with just one officiant).  We realized our clients were similar and we loved working together.  She does a great job of getting to know the couple and crafting a very specialized service.  She basically makes Mitzi wife tear up every single time.  She is thoughtful and it shines through.

We are fortunate to get to work with her on many elopements.  She started an amazing site called Elope Seattle Style.  She guides couples through all the ropes for a Puget Sound elopement.

Here is a sneaky peek at our latest post from our wedding blog.   We met up with  Joplin Designz and Wanna Cupcake and had a meeting of the wedding vendor minds.  Hop on over to the Firstlight Photography Wedding Blog for the full skinny on these amazing (and local) vendors.