Picture perfect

On Saturday, we met with one of Jonathan's groomsmen, Sal, to take engagement photos. We hadn't planned on taking any kind of photos like that, which is why we turned down our wedding photographer awhile back for e-pics. But we saw Sal's growing interest in photography and I'm all for supporting that! So we changed our minds and went with it. It was a fun afternoon from start to finish.

Saturday's weather ended up being great! Originally rain was in the forecast but luckily that was not the  case. I had been stumped about where to go for a good week. I thought maybe Central Park. But then I didn't want to make anyone drive into Manhattan and deal with traffic, especially on everyone's day off. Kim had suggested Flushing Meadow Park. Perfect! (Thanks again, girl.) Sal had written us an e-mail the day before with location suggestions and Flushing Meadow Park was on the list as well. Sold.

Seriously...look at this picture. Picture perfect day. Check out that rainbow!

Sal brought along an assistant, one of his sister's boyfriends, a super sweet guy named Tony who helped greatly with lighting. A very sunny day = lots of annoying shadows for portraits at times but he had an umbrella for the fill light. Super impressed with Sal's knowledge. Here's a link to the website if you're local and interested! http://www.graffeophoto.com/

Once we get the pictures, I am excited to pick the one for the save the date. I saw a few sneak peeks after we were done for the day and I know we will have a lot of good ones to pick from. We had props for some of the shots and I was happy it photographed well! I liked that we shot with someone we knew because we were both able to be comfortable in front of the camera. Well for me anyway. Jonathan's rarely ever camera shy. Here is a glimpse of the props we used :)

 Next Friday we hit the one year mark (whoa...) so there are a few things to check off the to-do list before we hit that milestone. Namely: the limo company, photobooth and someone to do hair the day of. I am sure Jonathan will be glad to get those over with so I can stop talking about them, lol!

Another thing we got to do recently was grab dinner with Jonathan's cousin, Ashley. The three of us hadn't been out together in over a year, I think, and it was good to catch up. (Also, you can't go wrong with California Pizza Kitchen.) We did have a small ulterior motive though....we asked her to be in the wedding party! She was happy to accept the bridesmaid title. Yay!! It was very fitting too because, for those who don't know the story, the night Jonathan and I met, the reason why he made it out that night was because his cousin had cancelled on him. One guess which cousin that is! :-P I love this picture of us after dinner!

Another thing worth mentioning is, I had recently found out our banquet manager at Chateau Briand had left and gone to Fox Hollow, another venue within the Scotto Brothers, the company that owns the two reception halls. I was disappointed because I liked Dawn and felt comfortable with her. Fortunately, there are other great people there we can deal with. Any change during this process definitely throws you for a loop though but it really doesn't affect the planning process and she did say we could still e-mail her if we had any questions. Jonathan and I had gone to Chateau Briand last week to drop off the second deposit. Even though it was a weekday when we had gone, there was an event that night so we couldn't roam around freely for some visual refreshment. They did however let us go up to the main ballroom and peek in for a few minutes.

It was weird looking around knowing we would be there this month next year! Jonathan got me worried after looking around the room and asking me if I thought it would be too small with 200 people there. It's not a small room at all but I understood what he meant in that moment. His worry just made me worry but then I shook it off. It's hard to really visualize what an empty room is going to look like once it's all done up for a wedding with the tables and centerpieces, DJ booth, etc. Years from now no one is really going to remember certain details we spend time obsessing about. So I might as well save ourselves the grief and not obsess at all. I'm sure it will be a great time no matter where we had decided to have it!