Finally, I am making time to create the albums for my wedding and frame some prints! I never thought it would take me over a year but 2016 was a crazy one and I’m always busy with work so I have to carve out time for personal projects. After getting married in 2015 and totally loving the whole wedding planning process, I have started advertising weddings as a service I offer. I have been shooting weddings for years through referrals but with weddings being more unique, creative, and styled nowadays, I am shooting a lot more weddings! So now that wedding season is over, I have made the time to finish up projects with my own wedding photos and share them here on my blog.
On August 28, 2015 I married Michael Kieffer and since we are both editors of Auxiliary Magazine we playfully dubbed it the Auxiliary Wedding. I always thought my wedding would be very non-traditional but as we started planning I found I really wanted to do many of the traditions so our wedding became a balance between following along with tradition and making it our own.
We had a short eight months to plan our wedding so I decided not to go with a custom dress to save myself the stress of trying to get a custom dress made in a short amount of time. I spent a week visiting bridal salons in Buffalo with my mom and found my dress pretty quickly! I fell in love with this Allure Romance dress from Victoria’s Bridal for its beautiful appliqué bodice and back. I loved that it was fun and romantic and had a big tulle skirt that was perfect for dancing.
I wanted just the right accessories for my dress and carefully considered the styling of my own wedding ensemble. My shoes are by UK designer Rachel Simpson and I purchased them from BHLDN so I could try on a few pairs without worrying about international shipping. My jewelry, a pair of earrings and a bracelet, I decided a necklace would distract from my dress’s bodice and a ring would distract from my engagement and wedding ring, were from BHLDN as well and designed by Atelier Mon. I got to have a bit of the custom design experience by working with Made by Anatomy to get the perfect veil to match my dress. Lastly, I wanted a purse because I wanted to keep my phone near me to snap photos and to have a place to keep my lipstick for quick touch ups. Plus I fell in love with this Kate Spade bridal purse, it’s just so whimsical and romantic! I made sure I could use all my accessories again and already have! I bought a short navy dress with an eyelash lace top and tulle skirt for a friend’s wedding this past spring and paired all my wedding accessories with it.
We went with a color palette of blues and purples because I decided to color my hair purple with blue highlights for the wedding! I had been wanting to color my hair purple for a while and my wedding seemed the perfect excuse to do it and fuss over my hair. Erin Moser now at Crown Bflo did my color, cut, and wedding day style. I am blessed and cursed with a ton of hair so no extensions were needed! We got married in a beautiful church with exposed arched wood beams, did our wedding photos (and spent a lovely afternoon) at Knox Farms, and had our reception at the Greenhouse Room at Hotel Lafayette. So we aimed to blend romantic with rustic with a bit of 20s glam and opulence. We added a moon motif in places here and there which our good friend tattoo artist Derek Hendrickson of Ink Inc. designed for us. BirchandBliss designed our wedding invitation and I designed our place cards, table numbers, and signs. We carried the blue and purple into our flowers which were by Flowers by Johnny and the bridesmaids dresses, a beautiful convertible dress by Jenny Yoo. For the last details, we went with a simple yet romantic wedding cake by Sweet Beginnings, moon inspired truffle favors by Oh Pour L’Amour Du Chocolat, and matching wedding bands custom designed by Gem Design Jewelers. I loved that so many of our vendors were in our neighborhood, we could walk to many of their shops!
Our wedding day was truly amazing. I did a lot of planning so that day of I knew that I had done all I could, there was no point stressing, what was going to be was going to be. The day was fun through and through and we were so happy to be surrounded by so many of our friends and family. I danced a ton at our reception as several of our friends DJed in short shifts and Mike even played a half hour set of songs he chose specifically for me. Sarah Wintle Photography captured our Auxiliary wedding day!
