Little Maya: she was so teeny tiny when I met her. There’s something really calming for me when I photograph a newborn/baby session. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the fact that they are pretty oblivious to what’s going on. Or maybe it’s just that I feel like time slows down a little for me when I spend a couple of hours with these little ones. As much as I love weddings, they can be quite hectic. Baby sessions on the other hand, are usually quite the opposite. They give me a chance to quietly go about my work. Though I guess I’m not the parents with a crying baby ;) And having gone through the requisite late nights and all-nighters in college, I know very well what sleep deprivation can do to someone. To be honest, that part of parenthood (at least early parenthood) is something I look forward to the least. In the meantime, I will remain the doting photographer. :)
This below is Boomer! He’s got such personality! Too bad my photos couldn’t quite capture that. Every time I pointed the camera at him, he’d pose.
Paris. Is there any other city in the world that can conjure up such feelings of romance & love? Perhaps that is subjective, but for me there is no other (except maybe Venice). This is the post where I tell you how much I love this city and share why I love it so much. This is also the post where you’ll have to excuse me for shamelessly stuffing in some terms like “paris wedding photographer” or ” destination wedding photographer paris”. Or “paris elopement photographer”. :) I’m not too picky. If you are planning to run away to Paris to get married and happen to read this, well, please email me! It would be a dream come true to photograph a wedding in Paris.
The first time I went to Paris was in June of 2009, after graduating from university. It was everything I thought it would be and more: the pastries, the chocolates (& macarons), the architecture, the history, the museums, the eiffel tower. It’s hard to imagine that when the eiffel tower was first constructed, the Parisians hated it and dubbed it “the giant asparagus”. Little did they know that it would become the iconic image of their beloved city. We stayed 4 nights on that first visit; it was not enough. I’ve since returned twice, and still it’s not enough. For those of us who love the city, we each have our own reasons. I’ve thought about this a lot, and it was hard to put into words but here are the two main reasons:
1. It is a city that’s steeped in history; every street corner, every bridge, every cobblestone. Having stood on the banks of the Seine for thousands of years, the city is practically alive with all the stories that took place across the years. But what about the Parisians? This is usually the question I get whenever I talk about my love of Paris. Well, what about them? Sure there are some who are true to the stereotype. But I don’t think they are any more rude compared to people of other major cities. I think they are just indifferent to outsiders. And anyway I can do without the people. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but for me Paris is not extra magical because of its people (the way Iceland is extra magical because of its people), Paris is magical in and of itself.
2. It is a city that is proud of its past and will not just forget it. They proudly & happily live amongst it. Because of that, and because of their philosophy of “working to live” instead of “living to work”, the city is very much for living. It’s built for you to walk, to go outside and connect, to enjoy your surrounding, or to pause and sit on many of the benches along its boulevards and the Seine. Though on my second visit I learned that Paris was not always this beautiful. The wide, treelined boulevards and typical Parisian houses (Haussmann style) with balconies on the 2nd and 5th level were the result of extensive renovations commissioned by Napoléon III in the mid to late 1800’s. The more modern part of the city is kept outside of the city centre. You won’t find any high rises within the city centre. And I hope that will never change. Most other great European cities are not like this. Their past is almost completely mixed in with their present. Not that there is anything wrong with that in and of itself. But there’s something wonderful about being able to experience the city the way you would have hundreds of years ago (for the most part). I think the only other cities that come close to this (that I’ve been to) are Amsterdam with its centuries old canal houses and Venice. But the latter is slowly becoming like an amusement park with fewer and fewer locals who can afford to live in the city. The saying is that at any given point in time, there are more tourists in Venice than there are locals.
So here are some photos from the three visits I’m lucky to have so far, along with some of my favourite things.
P.S. some of these were taken more than 3 years ago, so don’t judge me too harshly ok? ;)
The cobblestones in this courtyard (bottom left) are among some of the oldest in the city.
It was breathtaking. I would go back any day just to lay my eyes upon them again.
Can’t talk about musées in Paris without talking about the Louvre. I’ve been to the MET in New York, some of the best in London and across Italy.
There is nothing like the Louvre.
You can spend days, weeks here and never see it all. There’s always a new hall to explore. The building complex alone is a museum.
If you visit the museum, be sure to stick around long enough to watch the awe inspiring sunset from the courtyards.
That was one of my absolute favourites from our first visit, and I go back every time I return to Paris.
Tip: admission is free first Sunday of each month; and free Fridays after 6pm if you are under 26. Also free for EU citizens under 26
Notre Dame. No matter how many times I come here, it still takes my breath away upon entrance.
Paris rooftops.
Walking around Montmartre.
Is it me or do the stones of the Sacré Coeur resemble that of The White City of Minas Tirith in Lord of the Rings?
Watch Return of the King for a close up, you’ll see what I mean.
Literary walks in Paris. All the great writers moved to or visited Paris at some point.
the vintage cars. the mini (by North American standard), vintage cars.
Here’s something I noticed about cars there: unless it’s brand new, the cars usually have mirrors falling off and lots of scratches and dents.
They don’t seem to think it’s such a big deal unlike in North America where they’ll probably threaten to sue you for a small scratch.
My theory is that they have so little space there, the scratches, dents and fallen/loose mirrors are bound to happen sooner or later.
The Parisians (and probably most Europeans) have adapted to that.
the many market streets, and street performers.
I think that’s an accordion…?
Flower markets/shops everywhere.
Pivoine, my favourite.
the bookstalls, or bouquinistes, along the Seine.
the streets themselves, and the buildings.
And the light that plays among the buildings.
Ok ready?
I don’t love French food…
Asian cuisine will always be my favourite. Italian is a close second.
I like French food, a lot. But I don’t love it.
There’s a funny story with the below right photo. M and I were at this restaurant just around the corner from the hotel we stay at.
Their menu was all in French (by the way this is how you know the restaurant is likely not a tourist trap) and we couldn’t understand all of it.
There was an appetizer that we found particularly puzzling so we asked the waiter if he could explain it in English.
All we got out of that exchange was something that sounded like “beer and cheese”. Although M heard “bear and cheese”
hahaha.
As you can see, it was a stacked pear with cheese. And it was delicious.
I guess the moral of the story is don’t be afraid to try something new when traveling…even if it sounds something along the lines of “bear and cheese”.
And speaking of French food, my favourite course is dessert. Pastries, macarons, ice cream. Everything!
Berthillon is the most famous glacier in Paris. Oui. There is always a line up. Their flag ship is on the Ile Saint-Louis.
It’s perfect after a long, meandering walk around the city.
And since many restaurants & cafes on Ile Saint-Louis carry Berthillon ice cream…
It’s perfect for the evening right before you return to your hotel as well.
Especially if it’s your last night in Paris. ;)
My personal favourite treat though has to the macaron.
I’ve sampled many different ones, but my favourites are still from Ladurée.
Chateau de Versailles. No photo will convey the scope and grandness of the palace and its gardens (except maybe an aerial photo).
No trip to Paris is complete without a visit to this magnificent palace. You can rent a bike and cycle through the gardens.
You can also boat in the ponds.
You can nap on the lawns.
The Hall of Mirrors…
Or maybe, the Hall of Tourists?
Everyone holding up their camera to take a pic of the hall.
I held up my camera to take a pic of the people taking pictures.
the Seine.
And lounging by the Seine.
the many bridges that cross the Seine and connect the Left Bank with the Right Bank.
and of course, sunsets from those bridges.
the eiffel tower.
especially when it lights up and sparkles.
and it’s even more amazing than it is during the day.
This happens for the three summer months from dusk to 1am, at the top of every hour for 10 minutes.
The first time I saw this, we were on our Fat Tire Bike Tour riding through the Tuileries garden like we were possessed trying to catch our evening boat tour.
Seriously it was magical. It was probably even more magical because I didn’t know about this little tradition.
Fat Tire Bike Tour – engaging and informative bike tour (we especially enjoyed the evening one) + you get to ride a bike through the city like a local!
Evening boat tour on the Seine – many companies do this.
Ice cream at Berthillon – even if you are not an ice cream fan (although how can anyone not be an ice cream fan?), give it a try.
But most of all, make your own Paris. Go and explore, get lost and you’ll discover things that you’ll love.
And one more time, if you are having a wedding in Paris (or even just thinking about it), email me already! :) I can’t wait until the next time I return.
I love photographing families – to be invited into a snippet of their day to document some authentic moments. Maybe it’s a Sunday morning, maybe it’s going to your favourite park, maybe it’s cooking together. Whatever it is, pick something that you love doing together, something that’s “your thing”. I know life is busy and we don’t always feel we are at your best because we devote so much of our time and energy to keep everything running. But life is also precious, and it will just fly by if we don’t take a moment and pause sometimes. I won’t tell you to “stand there and just smile”. Your hair doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to wear matching outfits (actually, please don’t!). It’ll just be relaxed and natural and I will capture something that not only looks good, but feels good as well.
On a sunny day in May, that’s exactly what I did with Maria, Christian and baby Kleo.
Featured on La Bride | Restaurant Wedding in Toronto
Janine & Chris met in teacher’s college through mutual friends. And Chris just knew that she was the one for him. They seem to be opposites in a lot of ways, but I think they complement each other perfectly. They have been teaching overseas the past few years, from South Korea to Bangladesh, and traveling to many places while they taught. Now they are on their new adventure in Qatar. You know what they say, couples who travel together stay together. :)
So on a warm summer’s day at the end of July, Janine & Chris got married at the Earth Bloor West restaurant (sadly this location is now closed). It was nice and warm and the sky threatened to pour down on us all day, but it held off until after their wedding. Janine and her bridesmaids got ready at her parents’ house, then we went to the Evergreen Brickworks for her and Chris’ first look and some portraits before heading to Earth for their ceremony and reception.
Not only was it a day of happiness and love for the couple, it was also a reunion with friends & family alike. Thank you Janine & Chris, for inviting me into a small but significant chapter of your adventures together!
It’s a little funny to be writing about our wedding day more than a year later (I can’t believe it’s been that long already!) but I like the idea of writing it down anyway and being able to reflect on it as the the years go by. I tried to finish this before we left for Iceland last June, but that just didn’t happen.
In this post I’m going to run through the story of our wedding day, and the previous posts on planning are here, here, here, and here.
Now that I’ve been a bit removed from the process, I’m astonished at how much planning went into it. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to stress about anything when it came to planning the wedding but I did stress about a few things, which was inevitable as I’ve come to learn. But, I always tried to keep the big picture in mind, which was getting married to M.
We arrived in France the week before our wedding day and spent a couple of days in Paris with my Mom. We had a few days in Provence before the wedding and planned activities with our families & friends along with final errands to run for the wedding. Table decor, flowers, hair/makeup trial for my MOH Jess and I, and buying wine! We spent late nights talking, hanging out, getting things done, doing a rehearsal of sorts the night before. We didn’t sleep all that much that week. That’s another thing, you will most likely be quite exhausted the day after your wedding.
On the morning of the wedding, M and I woke up early and he drove to Avignon to pick up my aunt & her family and two of our friends. I opted to get a manicure that morning with Jess, and of course half an hour later, I had already ruined two of them. No time to redo it and it ended up not being a big deal. We spent the rest of the morning setting things up: laying out the table settings, setting up for ceremony, putting lavender into the confetti cones we made the night before, putting up string lights for the evening, setting up the candy table etc. Everyone helped out and we were incredibly thankful for that.
In a perfect world, I would have written my vows & thank-you speech months in advance and worried about the other things later. But I left it until the morning of. The two months leading up to the wedding were so hectic that I didn’t have time to sit down and properly think about it (we also moved the month before the wedding). We had figured out the ceremony plan the week before and had a few readings for our friends to choose from. I had no idea how to write a ceremony, but got some great ideas from A Practical Wedding and ended up basing ours on the civil ceremony we had at Cityhall because we liked it so much. I locked myself in our room for over an hour and finally sat down to write my vows and my speech. And then cried for most of that hour as I wrote. I hadn’t realized how much emotion had been accumulating in me and it wasn’t until I sat down and reflected on the significance of the day, our marriage, all the things that had taken place in the past 8 years of our relationship that led us to that day, our families and friends. It was difficult but I made it through. Then I was glad that I had that “good cry”, because then maybe I’d be able to hold it together for the rest of the day (if you know me, you know I’m a really emotional person. I’m that person who cries at the movies…sometimes during scenes where I’m the only person who gets emotional). I wish I had written vows that were more meaningful or more profound, or funnier. But I’ve come to the conclusion that my vows were just one chapter in our marriage.
We picked up peonies and roses for my bouquet and Jess’ bouquet, as well as for the dinner table, the day before. I had assumed (quite incorrectly) that you should just be able to pick up flowers anywhere in Provence. There were lots of flowers, but they were all in people’s properties. And here comes a funny story. There is a beautiful house besides the main road between the villages. It has an incredible garden with beautiful garden roses. We visited a couple of flower stores but for some reason (I honestly don’t even know what it was now) I wanted to check out more. So I made the suggestion of stopping by the “flower house” and see if the owners would maybe consider selling some of them to us. Bad idea #1. We parked by the side of the road and walked up to the property gate, which was wide open. So we walked in. Bad idea #2. We didn’t see anyone, and looked around the main garden and pool area, still no one. So we rang the doorbell. Two minutes later, a lady in her 50’s and what appeared to be her mother came to the door and asked us very angrily in French what we wanted. Jess explained frantically what we wanted to ask and apologized for us. The lady insisted we should have rang the bell at the gate (we would have, had we seen it. We looked for it on the way out and it was hidden by the gate that was wide open). Jess apologized again and again and of course they weren’t interested in selling any of their flowers either. I think the fact that Jess spoke conversational French (she’s quite fluent actually) boded well for us. We were just thankful that they didn’t come to the door with shot guns. Back to the first flower store we went. It turned out they did have peonies even though we didn’t see any in the morning. 60 Euros later, we had over two dozen peonies and a dozen roses. I put the bouquet together on the morning of the wedding, thanks to a little research and a flower arranging class that I went to with Jess. In hindsight, that probably should have been done the night before, so my advice to other DIY-ers out there is to do as much as you can before the wedding day.
During the planning process, I had entertained the idea of doing my own hair & makeup. But then realized that a) I never do anything with my hair and I’m really quite clueless with that kind of stuff and b) I wear minimum makeup on a daily basis and really wouldn’t know what to do with that either. With those two realizations, came the third and final reason that made the decision for me to hire professionals, which was so that I wouldn’t need to worry about hair & make up the morning of the wedding. I loved my hair and was really glad that I still looked like myself after putting on more makeup than I’m accustomed to.
If you’ve ever been to a wedding before, you know that more often than not they run late. After what felt like forever with the makeup application (although it was nice to just sit in a chair and do nothing after a busy morning), I got in my dress, tied my bouquet together with ribbons and went outside for our First Look. I felt nervous, not nervous about the wedding, but just anxious from anticipation. I talked about our First Look and why I love the idea of it as a photographer, in a separate post here so I won’t mention too much here. I will say again though, that it was one of my favourite moments of the day, to spend with my husband. We had seen each other that morning here and there, but it was so special to spend those quiet moments alone with him after we both got ready. And that was the second time I got teary eyed that day. I remember saying to M that I didn’t really want to have our ceremony in front of everyone, even though they were our closest friends & family. I think the introvert in me just wanted to elope with just the two of us.
We left out a lot of traditions (the ones that didn’t really make sense to us) when it came to the wedding. One of the few we did keep was to have a Chinese tea ceremony with my mom and my aunt as a way of honouring my heritage. The funny thing about a wedding day is the emotions that sneak up on you at unexpected times.
After some family photos, it was time for the ceremony. As I stood linking arms with my mom, and watched Jess walk down the aisle ahead of us to the music of Desiree’s I’m Kissing You, I started to tear up again. And as we walked down towards my groom, I couldn’t help but smile as M beamed at me. No tears there, he was just too happy. My mom gave me the longest squeeze after we reached M…probably one of my favourite photos from the day. A lot of people say that the day goes by in a blur, especially the ceremony. But for me, the ceremony was one of the most memorable parts of the day. We didn’t want to rush it to get to the “party” or just gloss over it because it was only a gesture. For me, the ceremony is the “meat and potatoes” of the wedding, the reason why you are all gathered in one place. After all, you can throw a big party any time.
One of the readings we had was by Victor Hugo, from Les Miserables:
“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.”
The other one was this lovely story by Edward Monkton. :)
In all the small chaos of the morning, we forgot to tell everyone about the lavender cones. But that’s ok, they threw them at us anyway.
Then off we went for some portraits.
Not bad for a bouquet I put together right? in fairness, the peonies were nice & full and so easy to work with.
There were some lovely speeches throughout the evening…but I just loved sitting under the evening sky, with the setting sun behind us, enjoying a delicious meal with our friends and family, and listening to some live music.
The Nikonites :D
And of course, some sweet treats since I have a weakness for sweets.
At the end of the night, we said our thank you’s and danced under the stars.
So there you have it: our DIY destination wedding. It certainly wasn’t perfect but it was largely how we had envisioned our wedding day would be. I still can’t believe we pulled it off in the middle of planning a move, working full time jobs, running my own business, without killing each other. That’s gonna count for something right? Here are some closing thoughts on wedding planning:
– Do something that you will absolutely love, whatever it is. A wedding is largely planned for the enjoyment of your guests, but it is also first and foremost, for the two of you. So do what you love.
– It’s so easy to get lost in all the little things that go into a wedding. When you get frustrated by one of those little things, take a step back and ask yourself if you really need that flower that’s out of season, or that particular table linen. Remember why you are doing this in the first place; because the feelings of love and joy, that’s what you will most likely remember 5, 10, 20 years down the road.
– When in doubt, hire a planner! (a good one that is) Why? See part 1 of this series
– Hire vendors you can trust to execute your vision, and trust them to do it. As a photographer, I can’t stress this enough. Sometimes a leap of faith is required, but do your research and trust your gut instincts.
– Don’t be afraid to ask for help…we thought we could do everything for our tiny little wedding, but we still couldn’t. It both felt vulnerable and awesome to have help, especially on the day of. (Yes I definitely have issues when it comes to asking for help)
– Plan, and research and stress if you must, because even if you don’t want to, it will happen. But on the day of, let it all go and just enjoy the day. Pause often and take everything in, commit them to memory…and be thankful that you found a great photographer to help you remember it all afterwards too ;)
– Don’t stop working on your marriage after the wedding. The wedding is one day, but your marriage will be the rest of your life (at least, I hope so).
P.S. all the lovely photos are by the talented Chloé of Caught the Light.
P.P.S. please don’t mind the various grammatical errors..
P.P.P.S. thanks so much for reading! if you are planning a small destination wedding, I hope you’ve found this series helpful. If you are not, I hope you’ve found this entertaining.
I spent part of an afternoon last May with Tara and her two adorable kids in the park. Judging by the photos, you’d never guess it was the middle of May already because it was quite chilly that day. Oh the joy of living in Canada ;)
We ran around the park, climbed some trees, and rolled in the grass. A lot. Ok, they did, I didn’t climb anything. But, there was a lot of silliness. I’ve said this before, but I really do love working with children. Their energy, sense of adventure, and wonder are just so contagious. It makes you forget all your worries and just focus on the present. Then you remember, yes, I used to do that too; you remember what it’s like to be fully present in the moment.
Right before the below photo was taken, I asked Abbey what was her favourite thing about her Mom, and she said, “everything”. :)
Did I mention, the session was a birthday gift for their Dad?
