Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Summer is officially here.  Ok, so it may not be the summer I'm used to.  I realized today that this is probably the first memorial day I won't be on a beach.  Every year I've been home for Memorial Day.  But alas, I'm here in D.C. 

To celebrate, Ben and I have done...well a whole lot of nothing. 

OK, maybe not nothing. 

Yesterday we went to Top Golf with Val and Justin.  Top Golf is this high-tech driving range that has big targets around the course.  The balls have a microchip with your name on it, so when your ball enters a target, the computer system keeps score.  It's a lot of fun.

After Top Golf we went to home depot.  oh my gosh I can't believe we aren't done painting our apartment.  We've been here for 4+ months!  When we first painted the bedroom blue, we decided we wanted the trim blue too.  Now that we've painted it green, we decided the white trim would look better.  So now we have to paint it back to white.  So we've bought the paint - we just need to paint it.

The rest of the weekend, we have been bit of foodies.  Last night we made homemade pizza - whole wheat dough, mozzarella, turkey bacon, chicken, pineapple and bbq sauce.  It was heavy, but very good.  I've also prepped to make a great, patriotic dessert for tomorrow's bbq at Robin's - one giant sugar cookies with cream cheese frosting and fruit.  We're putting raspberries, blackberries and blueberries on it.  Maybe I'll upload a picture once its done.

We also had lots of wedding chat, and made some progress on caterers.  Nothing major to report.

I hope everyone is having a fantastic, relaxing Memorial Day weekend! 

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Since most of you reading this already know it, it’s probably redundant for me to tell you that I LOVE pictures.  They only cover all of the walls in every apartment/dorm room I’ve lived in. And now they cover my cube as well.

When planning a wedding, you have to decide what is important to you. Some people go all out on flowers. Others on food. Well I’ve decided pictures are going to be a priority for me.

I’ve heard from many a brides that your wedding day travels so quickly, that you often remember it based on the pictures.  So I am thigh deep in information about photographers.

I know I like more of a “photojournalistic” style than traditional wedding. Sure, there will be the posed shots of the families and everything, but I really like fun and creative pictures.  Cool color lays and/or framing can take a standard picture from nice to WOW – THAT’S COOL!

I’ve decided the big things for me are:

• I want the photographer to be there pretty much all day.  I love the photos of the bride getting ready with her bridesmaids. And getting dressed. And doing her makeup. And having her necklace put on her.

• Digital negatives and copyright – I want it. Being such a picture person, I want to be able to put the pictures on my computer. And print/order copies of them whenever I want.  Getting tired of that framed photo of the reception, oh look, here is another one to replace it.  Then I can also make the picture books how I want them. damn type-A personality :-)

Things I’m not so sure about.

• Do you really need two photographers? Do they really get two different stories from the wedding, or do you just end up with a lot of dupe photos?

• Packages that come with photobooks/large framed pictures. Do they really end up saving you money to buy the package? Or are you better off getting things done separately?

Any advice on negotiating with photographers and selecting packages?