The beautiful bride herself!
Their ceremony took place in the actual vineyard, as the sun was setting.  It was perfect!

Thank you to Occasions for this amazing feature!

A recap of our weekend, taken with the iPhone.  I recently discovered Instagram, and am slightly obsessed.  Follow me!!  Britaphoto

There were a few hiccups in our plans, but I have to say Jessica and Charles’ engagement session was nothing short of awesome.

Definitely one of my favorite wedding photos :)  To see Paul & Alison’s wedding, click here.

1. Saying no:  It’s okay to turn down clients.  This may seem to go against the grain; it was one of the hardest things to learn, but had the biggest impact on our business.  We want to focus on quality, not quantity.  In order to deliver quality weddings to exceed our expectations (and keep our sanity!), we can only accept a certain number of events and sessions per year.  This is what works for us.  We want to handle everything ourselves:  From the initial email to the final delivery of our package.
2. Enrolling in Pixifi:  A time saver & a life saver.  Before this year, we haven’t explored the option of using a system to manage our leads, clients or events.  Thankfully, we gave it a try and are so glad we did!  We wrote a full review on how much we love Pixifi (click here to read it).  Just imagine a place where studio management = peace of mind.
3. Managing our time:  This has been the hardest to learn.  That fine line between work and life.  Work/life balance?  What’s that?  It’s something that we learned how to manage and we will be much better at in 2012.  We have a super organized list of to-do items (urgent vs. not urgent), and even schedule for “down time.”  Otherwise, we’d be working from the moment we wake up to when we go to bed.  It looks something like this:  Eat, work, eat, work, eat, work, sleep. Repeat.  Been there, done that.  Now that we have an understanding of what every week looks like and how we need it to run…we have  little bit more life in our schedule.
4. Updating our blog, hosting company:  We have used ProPhoto Blogs  since we started our first blog ever.  We just recently upgraded to ProPhoto 4 and switched our hosting to BluHost.  Those 2 changes have saved us hours of  time.  From the inserting all images at once feature in ProPhoto, and using a hosting company that can load a page in under 5 minutes (who knew?!), we’ve saved time, energy and stress.
5. Switching to Mac: I thought long and hard about this one before making the switch.  Because I never had a Mac, I never understood the value of one.  I always thought, well all the cool designers and photographers have them.  But I don’t need it.  My PC can do everything Apple can do.  So, years went by…and my increasing frustration for my slow, frozen, new PC led me to the nearest electronic’s store.  I wandered around Best Buy and played with all the demo Macs on display.  They were so pretty.  I wanted one to just sit on my desk!  After speaking with the Apple representative, I was sold and went home with my first Apple product:  An iMac.  Not only does it look pretty darn awesome on my desk, but it’s lightning fast (thus, saving me more time & energy).  And, I’m one of those photographers now and proud of it!  With all the time we saved, we bought a MacBook Air, too (which I can use to remote into the iMac).  It’s amazing.  Fast, powerful, and pretty.  :)

We bought this mug at a Starbucks in Shanghai (check out pictures from our trip, here)!  We always buy coffee mugs as a souvenir to every place we travel (we love coffee).  I love that it has a dragon on it!

We also love Starbucks :)
Okay, one more picture of this mug :)  The right picture:  One of my favorite places & where I spend most of my time.  
AND, we just received wedding invitations from one of our bride & grooms, Ian & Victoria!!  We have the most amazing clients – it’s so awesome.  These invitations are freaking cool, too!  Did I mention that Ian is a designer?  He MADE those invitations.  Ahhhh!  I just love how creative they are.

China was unlike any place I have visited before.  I stood in the middle of the street, taking in all the sights, smells and sounds.  The buildings filled the entire sky, the stinky tofu was unlike any other smell, and the car horns and motorcycle engines were blaring.  Talk about a sensory overload.  It was amazing!  I learned so much about Chinese culture; from their way of everyday life to how much control their government has.  Over dinner, we spoke with a Chinese woman couldn’t believe how our American government didn’t control the media (our television, radio, newspapers, etc…).  At the same time, I couldn’t believe how much their government controls everything.  You can’t even login to Facebook if you’re in China (there are that many users already without people in China…and that’s a lot of people)!  It was a learning experience for both of us.  And, I learned so much more throughout our entire trip.  I’m grateful to have experienced this country, on the other side of the world.

And, to begin:  One of my favorite pictures, from the Great Wall of China.  The Great Wall!  With my first step, I had immediate goosebumps.  It takes your breath away.

(Warning:  This is a long, picture-filled post) :)

At the Forbidden City.  Ironically, that awesome lighting is from the sun trying to peek through the thick smog.  It worked well :)
This was taken from the observatory at the Pearl Tower, in Shanghai.  Again, you can see the thick layer of smog.  But, it made for gorgeous, golden light on the city skyline.Here is that same view, taken at night.Something about that smog…I really love it here.Before we departed on out 13 hour flight, we had to connect through Los Angeles, California.  Fortunately, we have a good friend who lives there.  That night, we ventured around and made our way to the Santa Monica Pier.  This was view from the very end of the pier, looking back.
Our first night in China!  We started off in Beijing first (then flew to Shanghai).  This was our very first meal here too:  SLIPPERY CHICKEN.  It was called that on the menu.  And, the chicken was indeed as described, slippery.  Once you get past the texture, it was pretty good!A picture with my friend and I!  I don’t have a clue what is written on that sign…but, it made for a fun picture!One of the guys trying to sell us hats, gloves and toys for $3!Taken from one of the doorways in the Forbidden City.  I just LOVE that light behind Nick.  It makes that doorway look so powerful!
Every American dollar equals 6.3 yuan (or RMB)
My favorite skyline of all time:  Shanghai.  It was unbelievable!  Imagine being in the city center, with buildings as high and as far as you can see.  When you drive one hour outside of the city, imagine still seeing buildings as high and as far as you can see.  It was truly a sea of buildings.  We visited a “small” town outside of Shanghai; our tour guide, Lucy, said that there are 6 million people living there.  I suppose that is a small city, when you’re referring to China’s cities.  In Shanghai, there are 23 million inhabitants.  Crazy!
All of us!  :) Tiananmen Square.  We were grateful for the amazing weather.  And, by amazing I mean blue skies…because every day it was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit (as the high)!!Our awesome guide, Lucy.  We loved her!  She was amazing, and we miss her already!Our tour bus had beer in the cooler for ONE DOLLAR.  It was so amazing.  It was filled with Yanjing and Tsingtao (the main beer of our trip)!The pedestrians had their own roundabout!  This was directly in front of the Pearl Tower in Shanghai.One of our excursions included eating dinner with traditional Chinese farmers in a village.  We learned how to make Chinese dumplings by hand, in their kitchen.  *Note, they are called farmers because they used to farm.  The government bought their land (so they are rich now), as they needed the space for construction and building.  And, their village is what we would call an apartment complex (very similar).Nick learning to make dumplings.  This is definitely one of my favorite pictures – he is listening so carefully.
And, the 2008 Olympic Bird’s Nest (Beijing National Stadium)!  Right to the left, is the water cube (where Michael Phelps swam)!!  We visited a jade factory, where every piece of jade is hand carved.  I snuck a picture of a worker carving.All of us again, on the Great Wall!  It’s still so surreal to say that we’ve been to the Great Wall!We had a delicious duck dinner, before enjoying a kung fu show!
Taken in the Hutongs.  Street food!  Nick tried it.  I was too scared :/  Although, it does look tasty!Oh, Shanghai!At one of the markets, we bought a painting from a Shanghai artist.  It looks just like the skyline below!  I’m excited to have brought back a really meaningful souvenir that we can hang in our house.One day, we went “high rise hopping!”  This is a view from one of the bars.  That tall, skinny building with the purple spheres is the Pearl Tower.The Pearl Tower!We went to a tea farmer’s house; she made us delicious, hot green tea!A little California view…before leaving for China.The view from the plane, as we were flying over Siberia.  Cool!We can’t wait for our next trip!!

This year’s recipients represent the top 5% of WeddingWire’s vendor community, across all service categories and all regions throughout the US and Canada.  I am so honored to have received this award from Wedding Wire.

How are the winners determined?
The WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards ™ recognizes the top local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism. Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the organization, the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ are awarded solely based on the reviews from over 1.2 million newlyweds. Awards are determined by a combination of four factors: Overall rating (quality), total number of reviews (quantity), review performace from 2011 (recency), and consistency of reviews from year to year (consistency). This year’s recipients represent the top 5% of WeddingWire’s vendor community, across all service categories and all regions throughout the US and Canada.

]]> http://www.britaphotoblog.com/4889/brides-choice-award/or/4889-brides-choice-award/feed/ 0