Do you miss it?

Much in line with the old "Does a tree falling in a forest make a sound if nobody is there to hear it?" vein, I want to know: do you miss me when I don't blog? :) I miss you. I really like blogging, so it's so weird not to!

I will be sure to give all my updates on my trips soonafter I get back. :) Thanks for hanging in there! Hope your week is going well! :)

Out of the Office

Hi!

Just wanted to let you guys know that we will be out of the office from Friday, Sept 7th until Friday, Sept 14th. We will have limited access to email and phone, but if you need something, please send us an email and we will get back to you as soon as we can!

We're off to Houston to celebrate birthdays with the family and then next week I will be in Los Angeles at a photography conference - so fun! :)

Blessings,
Stacy

Alisa & John : Engaged!

Alisa and John are so cute . . . when I told them that their pictures would be on the blog they were like "blog??" :) This makes me laugh because I have some couples that follow my blog daily and then some that don't even know it exists and I think that's so funny! Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with these two and we got some great pictures of them. I'm looking forward to shooting their wedding in October. :)



















Check out their slideshow!

My friends are so great!

Yesterday my dear friends Krissy and Cortney took me out to a Birthday happy hour (my b-day is this Saturday!) and it was so fun! We got 99 cent margaritas and a huge scoop of ice cream on a sopapilla - what more could you want? THANK YOU Corny and Kissy - I LOVE yall! Cortney also got me the coolest presents - Kissy forgot my present. :) Shame on her.

Here's Cortney's camera phone pics from last night:

Kiss and me





Kissy


Stacy under the influence of extreme exhaustion and lots of sugar! :)


Corny is a cutie


Then I got together with many of central Texas's finest photographers who also happen to be some of my favorite new friends. We went to San Marcos and had a great dinner along the river. My food was actually terrible and I had to send it back (I NEVER do that!) so I won't mention the name of the restaurant, but let's just say it was trout that tasted like feet. Woops.

Here are the fun photographers I hung out with last night: Amy DeYoung, Courtney Sprague, Jennifer Nichols, Jennifer Wilson (Silver Plate Photography), Michael Hooks (Hooked on Photography), Kellie & Traci (Anne Marie Photography), and the awesomely cool Eric Von. Sarah from Roxy and Kai was sick and couldn't make it :( and Lisa Woods is in the dawg house cause she didn't show and Tyler Schmitt is in the even bigger dog house because he made Cross mad. :)

Love
Stacy

Clayton & Cynthia's Wedding!

Clayton and Cynthia had a lovely Labor Day wedding and Stan and I were honored to be a part of it! These two are ministers and they are both very dearly loved in their church community. They invited their entire congregation to the wedding, so it was HUGE and so awesome! They had not one but two receptions with 4 DIFFERENT cakes!!! :) Yes, this is heaven to me folks! I made myself kiiiinda sick by the end of the night, but all-in-all, it was a wonderful time! :) Here's just a few of our many favorites from the day:

Mark your calendars - Fox 7 Morning News Interview!!!!!!!!!

Hey guys!

Okay, as you read a few days ago, I have an awesome opportunity coming up and I would LOVE it if you could watch me on the news for my interview about Trashing the Dress. The date is set: Monday, September 17th and I will be on-air at 8:53am (they are hard core with times in the news business). I will remind you again, but go ahead and set the DVR, please! :)

I am so excited!

Eric & Nikki's Wedding!

Last night Stan and I went down to Vintage Villas to take pictures of Eric and Nikki's beautiful wedding. The weather was great until about 10 minutes before the outdoor ceremony was scheduled to begin, then all heck broke loose and it started pouring. Miraculously, it stopped raining right when the ceremony was to begin, so they decided to move forward with the wedding outside. It was a great decision because it was absolutely gorgeous and much cooler than it had been before the rain. The threatening storm clouds in the distance made for an awesome, heavenly backdrop as Nikki and Eric became husband and wife.

Special thanks to Bethany and her girls from 36th Street Events, who did a fabulous job coordinating this wedding and to Lauren at Vintage Villas, who is just so sweet and organized. This was the first time that Stan and I had ever shot at Vintage Villas and it was a wonderful experience!

Here are a few of our favorites from last night:





The boys praying before the ceremony






Stan got this amazing shot during the ceremony!






Eric's and his two girls + Nikki and her twin boys = one beautiful family!


I loved all the color that was around the place . . . from the gorgeous flowers to the dark blue sky






Nikki and her father's dance was so beautiful and so emotional




Thank you SO much, Eric and Nikki, for letting Stan and I be a part of your big day - we loved being there with you!

Happy Friday!

I hope all of you are planning a fabulous holiday weekend! Stan and I are going to be very busy, but it will be so fun. :) We have 2 weddings, one barge party, one church hoe down :), and lots of reading about little kid illnesses (for me). We start the weekend off with Eric and Nikki's fabulous wedding out at Vintage Villas tonight. Many pictures coming soon!

Love
Stacy

PS - here's a pic of Nikki & Eric


PPS - here's a couple of the pictures from when we went out for our Anniversary a few weeks back. We did lots of these silly self-portraits! :)

Deep breath. :)

Wow - the beginning of this week was CRAZY. Many of you know that beyond this photography world, I am also in Nursing school and will be graduating with my R.N. in May - yippee! :) Well, if you've been in Nursing school (many of my brides are actually nurses!), then you know how insanely crazy the first week of each semester is. In normal school, it seems like you can kind of ease in to the semester and the first week is usually a light one. Not so in Nursing school. The first week is basically the most stressful week of the whole semester because we have a couple of intense skills exams the first week that pretty much determine if you are even allowed to go on in the program or if you get kicked out - SO scary!

I am pleased to say that I made it out of these exams ALIVE and passing them, which means I can continue towards my May graduation date! Everything from here on out will be so much better - not easy, but better! Next week I'll begin my pediatric clinical rotation, which I am so excited about. I can't wait to take care of those sweet kiddos! After this 5-week rotation, I'll have 5 weeks in the delivery room (SOOOOO exciting!) and then 5 weeks at the State Hospital for my psychiatric rotation.

Everybody is shocked when they find out that I am a full-time professional photographer AND a Nursing student - it always makes me laugh! :) What I always tell people is how blessed I am that these two worlds fit together soo perfectly. The fact that I run my own business allows me to take on as much or as little as I want, based on how my schedule is at the time. This summer I was able to shoot a LOT and also work on a lot of new things in my business. It's also nice that I can hire other professionals to take care of some of the time-consuming areas of my business like print fulfillment and preliminary album design so that I can be free to provide awesome customer services to my Brides & Grooms. I also only accept a fraction of the weddings that most full-time photographers around here do because I always want to deliver the best, and if that means less weddings so that I can ensure that, then that's what I will do. :)

Anyway, the school semester is officially underway and I'm already loving it! :)

People also often ask me what I am going to do once I graduate: nursing or photography? Great question! My plan is to continue to do as much photography as I do now (between 20 and 30 weddings a year) and to pick up about 1-2 shifts a week as a nurse, working for a hospital (or other setting) on an "as needed" basis. This way I will be able to make my own schedule, again, based on how busy I am with photography stuff. It's really the best of both worlds and I feel so lucky to have found not one, but TWO careers I am passionate about!

Well, I guess I just gave you the complete 411. From now on, when people ask me about my work/school balance, I will just tell them to come see blog post #546, where I have laid it all out for the world to see. :)

Thanks for reading!

Love to all,
Stacy

Jason & Dianna's Slideshow

One thing that I want to start doing is sharing some of the slideshows that I make for my couples on the blog! :) Don't tell any of my brides and grooms (brides and grooms look away!), but I secretly create slideshows for them - I don't even list them in my packages because I really love to surprise them! Anyway, I thought I would share one today and who better than the tremendously sweet Jason & Dianna? :) The show has music, so turn your speakers down if you're at work (Cortney).