Amy and Ben got married in August at the Valhalla Grand Hall in South Lake Tahoe.  Valhalla is a great historical building at the Tallac Historical Site on US forest service land on the southern shores of Lake Tahoe. The venue offers some cool rustic simplicity with a great historical wood hall with a floor to ceiling stone fireplace, and a lot of tall trees and other old buildings on the grounds. As a historical site on forest service land, Valhalla itself can be reserved, but the site as a whole, including the beach and pier, remain open to the public, and the ceremony must be held indoors. Most of the public is gone by the time the sun sets and then you can get some nice photographs out by the water. Amy and Ben rented out rooms at the nearby Lakeland Village to get ready and then had a short drive to Valhalla afterwards. For couples that want to spend more time taking pictures prior to the ceremony, there are several nice local beaches within a mile or two of the Valhalla property.

Wedding coordinator: Heather Spear, Summit Soiree

By Monique and Scott

From the minute we met with Lindsey and Jack for their engagement session at Sand Harbor, we knew they were going to be a great couple to work with at their Martis Camp wedding in Truckee. They were so playful with each other and adventurous, scrambling all over the boulders, we knew the wedding was going to provide us with amazing images all day long. Their venue, Martis Camp, provided a secluded, classic Tahoe woods spot for the wedding: getting ready in the spacious, plush mens and ladies lounges, the ceremony overlooking the golf course with the woods and mountains surrounding them, and the clear tented reception on the outdoor patio overlooking the valley. I’d say there were 3 underlying, and very photogenic, themes to this wedding: Abalone, Machine Guns, and Bacon, or I should say swine and meat in general! So to explain these themes, lets start with the abalone: Jack is an abalone diver, so it was on one outing with Lindsey that he came walking out of the freezing cold water holding an abalone shell that he had “found.” It turns out that he had put the ring in the shell and proposed to her there on the beach! For the wedding, Jack was also wearing a gorgeous abalone shell belt buckle. Now for the bacon:  Jack is a chef, so he also wanted the cocktail hour to include some unique hors d’oeuvres. He had several varieties of dried meats and cheeses imported from Italy, including wild boar. And I have heard about some crazy bacon flavored things before, like bacon flavored toothpaste, bacon cookies, etc. Lindsey, knowing Jack’s love of all things bacon, had Martis Camp make them a special grooms cake, a bourbon chocolate bacon cake. And now for the machine guns: Jack really wanted to do some fun photos of him and his groomsmen with some guns, so he brought toy machine guns for some of the portraits. They were also a big hit at the photo booth!

Jack golfing with his groomsmen before the getting ready part of the day.

Jack brought some toy machine guns as props for the photos!

The clear top reception tent, with open sides overlooking Martis Valley.

Brown sugar & salted caramel wedding cake and bourbon chocolate bacon cake, with a garnish of fresh fennel.

Wonder Bread 5 had the whole tent rockin' out all night!

Here are a few of our favorite images from our Crazy Corner Photo Booth:

It has been a long while since we have posted any images from our photo booth shoots, so here are some from one of our recent weddings at the Chateau in Incline Village. Our photo booth is not really a photo booth in the traditional sense of the word. There is a great local company called Reno Photo Booth, that will bring the machine you sit in and lots of props and will take care of getting you the small, photo-sequence printouts on the spot. What our photo booth consists of is basically a mini-studio that we set up in a corner of your reception venue, where we have nice, soft studio lighting, a backdrop of your choice and some props. We have done these shoots for a few years now without props, and since I actually man the camera, I manage to get some great shots of people by working with them to get their personalities to shine through. Recently we had a really wild couple hire Monique and I to shoot our package that included the photo booth. They brought loads of props on their own, including several toy machine guns. People had so much fun playing with all this stuff that we decided to trade them some big prints for the whole box of props. We brought them out to this wedding without really saying anything, just to see how people would take to them and I no sooner had the booth set up then we had a line of people trying on different props. So I we have added and expanded the prop box, and now truck it along anytime somebody has our photo booth at their wedding. These images are shot on the same high, quality camera we use for all the wedding photography, so your photos are not available right then and there, but when you do get them along with the rest of your wedding pictures, they are super-high quality images that can make great wall prints or anything else you may desire. I like the black and white effect for most of the photo booth images, but the originals are always in color, so you have a choice.

Monique and I had a great time shooting this late fall trash-the-dress session with Megan and Tim at Sand Harbor in Incline Village. It was starting to get cold as the sun went down, but they really wanted some sunset shots and Megan was game to go into the water with her dress on, so with towels and jackets at the ready we plodded into the water with them (actually Monique did most of the plodding into the water while I stood on shore directing.) Megan and Tim had just come back from what looked like an amazing honeymoon on Bora Bora. One of the pictures they posted to their facebook page (by the way, if you are a client or potential client, click the more info tab at top left and friend Photography by Monique on facebook,) showed their vacation cottage, on stilts in the ocean at night with a swimming hatch right in the front deck and some cool blue lights illuminating the ocean under the building. This gave me the idea for some of the final pictures in the sequence where we actually bagged a flash in a watertight case and hid it in the water behind Megan to try to illuminate the ripples underwater much the way I saw from their vacation pictures. It was a fun shoot and we got some amazing shots out of it. I’m posting the images in a new photo gallery instead of inline, like we have done with all the pictures in our previous posts. Let me know if you like it, hate it, or whatever. Enjoy!

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We had a great day photographing Megan and Tim’s PlumpJack wedding at the beginning of September. We love the new ceremony site with the tram face of Squaw Valley ski resort in the background. The late afternoon light during the ceremony was exquisite, glowing and back-lit, with the dark granite mountains behind the altar. It was a perfect location for all of the post ceremony family shots as well. We then took the couple and the wedding party to the valley for some portraits along the wooden fences, with the tall, end-of-summer golden grasses all around them. The reception coverage included our super fun “crazy corner photo booth” where guests had a blast with props, haming it up for the camera. We are looking forward to their trash the dress session coming up this weekend!