Holland Photo Arts Blog – Charlottesville Wedding Photographers

Whoa, is it Friday already?! Excellent! Well, I’ve been sitting on this truly fabulous find for a while now since we’ve had so many gorgeous weddings & fun portrait sessions to share with you. Since we’re not quite ready to share the next one in the queue though, I get to feature a great find today! Yea! We hesitate to say it, but we think you’re going to fall in obsession with today’s FAB Find…

Links We Love – Pinterest

You may remember a while back when Bill posted about using Evernote for your wedding planning. Well, a fantastic new website has come along to also help save your back from lugging around that wedding inspiration binder! Seriously, we hope you don’t hold it against us when you find all the copious amounts of free time that you we know you have gone. Just gone. But I promise you, this time-suck is worth it!

What is Pinterest you ask and how can it work for me? Well, it is a basically a virtual clip board and anything you see on the Interwebs or that you scan in, can be copied and pasted into a “board”. Basically, you can pin a photo that you find of interest into a board you created. You can create an unlimited amount of boards (or at least as many as any human would want). You can create collections of things you love and share them with your friends and followers. You can also follow other peoples’ boards and pin something they found to one of your boards.

(Clink on the screen shots to see them full size.)

I have to admit, though, I’m quite the newbie and haven’t pinned a lot yet, but I absolutely *love* using it! Since I don’t have a wedding to plan, I’ve been using it primarily for home decorating & design inspiration. What I have so far:

My Studio Inspiration board has the most pins and is my most active board.

You can follow your favorite event designers & bloggers, whose taste and style you admire and get updates when they add new pics to their boards. I checked with a few of my favorite “follows” to see if I could share a few of their incredible boards with you…

Courtney Spencer of Merriment Events has a huge amount of eye candy pins and I absolutely love all her many specific categories. Makes it SO much easier to find things of interest.

Her gorgeous ceremony details board…

LOVE these unique color combos!

Jeannine is the founder of the fabulous Small & Chic in C’ville blog. She also happens to be planning a wedding!

And, of course, in honor of the BIG Wedding happening today, some royal inspiration for you!

And no proper English wedding inspiration would be complete without some fabulous hats!

Well, that all looks and sounds great, Anne, but how the heck do I pin something??? First you need to request an account. Since they’re a new site, they’re trying to take it slow and add people as they can, but you should hopefully get your verification email in a week or so. Create your account and install the Pin It bookmark (instructions on are their website) and then start pinning (even works on iPad). If you see some eye candy you love, click the Pin It bookmark and then choose the photo you want to pin. It’ll ask you which of your boards you want to pin it to, make notes about and even create tags so it’s easier for you and others to find something specific. Pinterest takes the source link and credits where the item was pinned from.

And if you’re worried about your fiance, family or friends seeing “too much” of your wedding plans, I would suggest creating another account without your full name where you can put all your finalized wedding plans.

And they even have an iPhone app coming soon!

There’s only one thing I’ve found I don’t like about Pinterest and that’s that oftentimes the original creator of photos doesn’t get credit for the photo because somebody pinned said photo from another blog or website who obtained it from the original creator. Yup, it’s happened to us. We’ve found photos of ours pinned from wedding blogs and the wedding blog gets the link credit on Pinterest boards. We don’t see any way around this right now, other than to require blogs to keep our watermark on the photos, but please do try to be fair and pin from the original creator when at all possible.

So what are you waiting for? Get pinning! Recipes you want to try, books you want to read, things you love, favorite quotations…..the possibilities are truly endless! And let me know when you do – I’d love to follow and see what you think is FAB!

Yours in pinning,
…anne

Back in 2004, on a beautiful  Sunday afternoon in August (no kidding, it was something like 74 degrees), we shot the wedding of Julie and Scott. They’ve been dear friends of ours ever since, and while we don’t get to see them as often as we’d like (really, who does?), it was so much fun spending an equally beautiful Spring afternoon with them and their darling little girl Samantha. We walked, ran and played all around the U.S. Capitol grounds before retiring with j&s for a dinner of excellent Belgian beer with moules & frites. It was the perfect way to spend a day, and we loved seeing them all again. We hope you enjoy perusing a few of our favorite images as much as we enjoyed creating them. Careful: Major Cuteness Alert!

Ready to see the entire gallery? The password is Samantha’s last name.

But why can’t I drink it?

No pictures, please.

Too cute!

You know you’ve established trust with your subject when…

Amazing, we didn’t have any tulip casualties!

And we’re done.

Almost. 

Thanks so much, j&s+s!! We had a blast with you all and look forward to seeing you again soon!

xoxo,
…a&b

Searching for the perfect way for your guests to share their thoughts and feelings in writing with you on your wedding day? Look no further than our new guest signing book. Filled with images from your engagement session, it has areas set aside with questions to help the creative juices flow. Your guests can answer whatever questions they like, or simply sign their names as they see fit. We can customize the colors to suit your own wedding’s theme as well. This new book also lays flat, which makes it easier for your guests to write in it. Interesting in having one for your wedding? Drop us a note and we’ll make it happen!

Here’s one from this past weekend’s wedding with Beth & Peter. It was a big hit among the guests, and we snuck peeks at some of the thoughts their friends and family were sharing in response to some of the questions. To one query, “What is best advice to getting along?” one person wrote, “Be a little deaf.” Hahaa, love it! Many responses were more long and thoughtful, while some were short and pithy. All in all, a great success.

Today is a happy day here at Holland Photo Arts World HQ. Today we get to share Melanie and Dominic’s fun and funky wedding with you! These two could not have been more joyous to be around and we were so thrilled to be a part of their beautiful day. Enjoy!

The fab team:

Venue: Briar Patch B&B
Event coordinator: Henriette Buell
Officiant: Bill Cochran
Catering: Smokin’ Willy
Make-up and hair: Gustavo
Cake: Sweet Revolution (oh, and Krispy Kreme!)
Florist: Shelley’s Floral
DJ: Randy Platts of Miles Stiebel

Want more? You can view the complete gallery of all their wedding images here. The password is Melanie’s last name.

It’s not everyday you see a cat at your wedding. This of course was the B&B’s kitty, who ruled the roost with a fur paw.

Just enough time for a quick First Sight!

Melanie’s sons played important parts during the wedding. Isaac was ring bearer and Ethan helped walk his Mom down the aisle! Love this shot below that Bill captured of Dominic in mid-high five with Ethan!

He literally sprinted down the aisle! We were lucky to get a shot of his passing blurness.

So dang sweet!

We absolutely adore these shots Anne captured of sweet Ethan with his Mom.

Think her son was pretty happy? Think she was? ;-D

Don’t know what this was about, but we love it.

Fun sequence…

Yum!

The cigars were a big hit.

Smokin’….

Dominic even had special red & purple Chucks for the occasion!

Yes, that says what you think it says.

Their cake was made and decorated by a dear friend who’s also competed on Food Network’s Challenge. The design was a complete surprise to the couple. Love how she incorporated Melanie’s ink!

Any wedding automatically gets coolness points whenever there’s a Krispty Kreme mountain around.

Donuts, cigars, and red wine. A unique combination, but clearly one that works here.

Poker and black jack at a wedding? Yes, please!

The kids were really into the cake cutting. So were the adults.

Dear m&d,

It’s the little things we remember the most in life. Sure, there are the once-in-a-lifetime vacations, the new car-of-one’s-dreams, etc. But more often than not we find that it’s the simple, but not at all small, moments make the biggest difference, leaving the most indelible, mark in our hearts and memories. We’re lucky to be able to watch and listen when these moments happen at our clients’ weddings. For yours, one of those moments was just before you walked down the aisle, Melanie. Your little boy Ethan gently kissed your hand, gazed up at you, and said, ”You look beautiful, Mommy!” So, so sweet. It demonstrated once again that weddings are more than just two people in love making it official. It’s truly a celebration of family, and yours epitomized that in so many ways.

We absolutely loved the way you made the day your own, serving delicious, cooked-on-the-premises BBQ, and bringing in professional card dealers for some (legal) card-playing for those who wanted to take a break from dancing. The blackjack tables in particular were well-visited, and with good reason. Everything was personal, it was you, and it was perfect. We were so honored to be there with you all. We’re pretty sure neither one of you stopped smiling all day and we truly can’t remember laughing so much at a wedding. (Usually it’s just our feet, backs and shoulders that are aching at the end of the day, but this time, our sides were!) Even the bi-polar Spring weather couldn’t get you guys down!

Thank you so much for having us up to picturesque Middleburg to celebrate with and document your wedding for you. The entire day was such a blast and we wish you both and your sweet family nothing but the best in the years to come.

xoxo,
…a&b