I know. Could that be any more perfect?

We shot their engagement session at their wedding venue, Kali Kate. I’m so so so excited about their wedding in September! And I’m even more excited that I will see David and Nola again so soon — David’s brother Steven is getting married to Liz next month, so they’ll be in all the family photos!

Here are just a few of my favorites from Nola and David’s lovely engagement session…

Valentine’s week, short & sweet: vegan cupcakes from Sugar Tooth Bakery (same place we got our wedding cupcakes!) – Wocka Wocka from the OPI Muppet Collection.

Truth be told, I think Sugar Tooth’s cupcakes are some of the best ever. You can’t even tell that they’re vegan — which is awesome, because butter-laden cupcakes give me a wicked-upset stomach. It’s like our new Valentine’s tradition, where Walt brings me a half-dozen red velvet cupcakes and I get to eat them with love in my heart and belly. Walt, who went to the renowned Mother’s Café (a vegetarian café in Austin) and didn’t order anything because he doesn’t like food without some sort of animal byproduct in them, has actually fought me for the last cupcake on past Valentine’s Days. So that’s saying something.

Posts you may have missed on the blog -
Groom’s Week | Part 1 (Getting Ready & Ceremony)
Groom’s Week | Part 2 (Receptions)

Elsewhere -
Liz and Steven’s Hipstery, Green, Nerdy, Jewish Lovefest – my awesome clients of the Whedon engagement session are on Glo-bride!
In other news, have you seen the new Glo-site? It looks amazing. Matching themes for wedding websites AND paperless invitations AND keeping track of your online RSVPs and guest list? So good.
Bent Objects – I love the zombie peanuts :)
Hee hee, a little late, but Game of Thrones Valentines are still funny.
Beautiful dancer photos by Cade Martin
And go vote for the Moment Junkie photo of the year on Facebook!

For the most part, the primary wedding photographer spends a lot of time with the bride, the wedding party, and the immediate families; and the secondary photographer spends time with the groom and the guests. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but this way all of the wedding is covered from multiple angles. I second-shot for a few very talented and wonderful Austin wedding photographers last fall and thought now would be a nice time to show more of the grooms.

The photos in the next two posts were taken for Sweet Caroline Photo, Eric Kotara, and Meredith Greager. Each image is noted for whom I shot the photo.

Part 1 – Some of my favorites of guys getting ready and ceremony…

My copy of A Practical Wedding signed by Meg – a care package from my friend Pamela in Canada yielded Smarties and Aero and a googly-eyed Valentine – Scout is feeling better so I am allowed to Photobooth with him again (it’s our my favorite pastime) – my awesome client Emily sent me a guide to her family and wedding party (with photos)! Love it! With this guide, I shouldn’t get confused…

You may have missed these posts on the blog -
Walt & me | How we met 
Austin ‘A Practical Wedding’ Book Tour Stop (with lots of photos)

Elsewhere -
Carey Mulligan talking about ‘Shame’ – she based her character a little bit on Francesca Woodman’s photographs. Woodman is one of my favorite photographers of all time. I need to see this movie (for more reasons than that)
The Mirage – This book sounds so fascinating. I need to add it to my list. Read this short review on Boingboing to be intrigued as well.
Why Willpower Matters – and how to get it 

Have a lovely weekend! I’ll be shooting an engagement session this Sunday with a verrrry special couple. And next week is Valentine’s Day — stay tuned for Groom’s Week (a collection of photos you’ve never seen!) Intrigued yet?!

The talk, about feminism and weddings, was amazing (as expected). The turnout was perfect for the size of the BookWoman location, and everybody was so friendly and talkative. Meg and the group touched on:

• The struggle (or lack thereof) about name-changing
• The noticeable difference between the father’s traditional role in weddings (“giving away,” father-daughter dance, toast, etc.) and the mother’s, and how that affects weddings and planning
• Mothers going a little crazy during planning
• Meg’s thoughts on Prop. 8 being overturned as unconstitutional
• Quote of the night: “I’m so closed about my private life, I could have two babies at home and you’d never know!”
• Hints about another book in the future (“after a nap”)

And although Meg closed her talk with the admission that she had done four interviews that day and was planning on skipping tacos and going to bed early, the book signings ended at 8:30 so we convinced her to eat one taco, come on, pretty please, please, please? So we went to Torchy’s, where half the group got the Fried Avocado, myself included.

Photos!

Not gonna lie, I laughed when I took this one. And then later Meg posed in front of this special section, so I think it’s okay to post this ^

And aren’t my hand-drawn maps to Torchy’s just beautiful? Yes, I thought so too.

It was so, so awesome meeting so many wonderful people, seeing a few I’d met before, and, you know, eating a taco with Meg and about 8 other people. (I also had a brownie, which might have elevated my mood quite a bit.) I went home quite content!

Let’s roll the hands of the clock back, back, back; back to the days when I was in college… I lived with two of my friends in a little house in north campus, and I had a year of school left to go before I got my degree. My hourly requirements were on the low side each semester, so I stuffed them with things that interested me (Vampires in Slavic Cultures class, for instance. Or a weight-lifting course), but I decided to help both my bank account and my waistline by getting a job at an ice cream store a block away from where I lived.

I was skinny and purple-haired and told the manager that my favorite movie was Wayne’s World. He told me that he liked my style and invited me to join the team.

No, this manager was not Walt. But yes, our story begins with ice cream.

The Amy’s culture is steeped in being weird, having fun, doing crazy tricks with ice cream, and, ultimately, great customer service. With eccentric hair, I fit in right away. My coworkers taught me how to balance ice cream on spades and throw the balls of treats up in the air and catch them in a cup. Every year, Amy’s has a competition among stores and employees to see who is the best at making up these elaborate tricks and catching the cream (it’s called the Trick Olympics).

One night, I was working with my coworker George when a tall, lean, curly-haired boy came into our shop.

The boy said, “I work at Sixth. Do you mind if I step behind the counter and make some ice cream? I just left my store and forgot to bring some home for my roommate.”

We said of course, and stepped into the back. The shop was dead-empty except for us workers, and I peeped around the wall to watch since there was nothing else to do. He threw the spades into the air to shake off the excess water. He threw one spade behind his back and caught it. He dug into the freezer, withdrew a hunk of dark chocolate ice cream, and slapped it rhythmically against the boards as he mashed in the candy. His skills were so impressive, so much better than anything I’d seen my coworkers do, that I stared at him in astonishment as he balled up the cream, tossed it in the air several different ways, caught the ball easily in a sundae bowl, and snapped on a lid.

“That’s Walt,” said George conspiratorially. “He’s the best trickster in the company. They don’t pay him nearly enough.”

Bam. Attracted. Not that I wanted to be.

(A video of Walt’s ice cream trickery taken by my cousin)

We had mutual friends, apparently. One of my coworkers, Eran, was good friends with one of Walt’s coworkers, Drew, and all three hung out and did “guy things,” like play video games. I tried to play matchmaker between Eran and my roommate by inviting them both out to a bar with a crowd. A big group of us ended up at the Ginger Man and Walt was there. He and I ended up talking about everything… ice cream, history (we are both history nerds), life. He was witty, he was smart, he was friendly, he was cute. Goodness, he was cute.

I told my boyfriend that I was attracted to someone else. Because yes — I was dating someone at the time. He was a good person, a nice boyfriend, someone steady. But in my heart I knew that he wasn’t the One, and meeting Walt was the final shove to make me realize it and end that relationship. Was I a bad person? Sometimes I think so… it was obviously my fault that he and I broke up. That being said, the relationship probably would not have lasted forever, and that man is now happily married to somebody else, and Walt and I are together and happy, so it was for the best. I didn’t sneak around and I was up-front about my feelings. Sometimes, life just happens, I guess.

The thing is, I didn’t know how Walt felt about me. He was friendly, for sure, but if he was giving off any hint that he liked me back, it was too subtle for me to recognize it. It turns out that he’d noticed me on campus two years before, when I lived in the dorms. If that’s not good memory…

So how did we become a couple? Out of the blue, my manager texted me and asked, “How did your date with Walt go?”

I squinted at the phone. “Huh? What date? Date with who?”

“With Walt. I heard from one of the delivery drivers that you two were spotted getting cozy the other night.”

Thinking that the delivery driver had seen me at the Ginger Man in mid-conversation with Walt while in our group bar hangout, I wrote back, “A lot of other people were there too!”

But it turns out that this driver saw just two people. A Walt lookalike and an Elissa lookalike, sitting somewhere in a romantic restaurant, alone. I have to stress that this didn’t happen. Furthermore, the driver asked Walt point-blank how his date was, and used my name. I was mortified that Walt would think that I made up a rumor we’d gone out. How pathetic would that be?

It gave me an excuse to talk to him again, though. Walt likes to make fun of all the little pretenses I created to start conversations with him.

It took bent metal for us to finally start dating. I was over at Drew’s apartment for a while, watching the guys play video games, until late in the night. (This was college, after all. Staying up past midnight was a normal, everyday occurrence.) When I finally decided to go home, I was so tired that I scraped the side of my car against a concrete pole in the parking garage. Resigned to the fact that I was probably too sleepy to operate a car, I went back inside and crashed on the couch. We shared our first kiss that night. Awwww squeeee!

Some couples have incredibly sweet, romantic stories. My parents, for instance? My dad followed my mom to Japan every year for close to a decade before she agreed to an international marriage. Walt and me? We met over ice cream and started dating after I scraped the paint off my driver’s-side door. Not the kind of stuff you find in storybooks, but it’s still our story, and we’re happy. So :)

Here are the details:

We’re all gathering at BookWoman at 5501 N. Lamar, at 7 pm, to meet Meg! The book talk is going to last until about 9. From there, we’re going to pack up and go to Torchy’s Tacos on 5119 Burnet (a few blocks away) for some tacos and beer!

This is an informal book tour stop, so there’s no fancy catering — just you and me and us having a great discussion about feminism and weddings, having our copies of A Practical Wedding signed, then getting our tacos Trashy (hint: that means with queso) while we chat and get to know each other. It should be a blast!

Remember to bring some cash to buy a book from BookWoman to get signed (let’s support the local businesses that are putting this on for us!) and for your tacos, if you choose to stick around for the afterparty :)

See you there!

View Larger Map

Here’s a map if you need a little help with direction :)

Elsewhere -
Light Stencils in Vietnam – very intriguing
Breading Cats – apparently, I need to do this

Short & sweet this week. As you may remember, one of our kitties, Pow, was sick a few weeks ago. Now that he’s made a nice recovery, his brother Scout started exhibiting very weird and different (but no less alarming) symptoms that something was very wrong. This week has been fraught with more kitty and vet drama, feeding the finicky Scout by hand, and giving many doses of medicine, as well as cleaning the apartment of much of the mess he caused.

All of that made leaving the apartment and taking photos a bit difficult, so no fancypants pictures this week. I’ll leave you with this:

Zoya’s “Tao” … and on my ring finger, two coats of Essie’s “Set in Stones” (and a Lindt truffle!). I actually hadn’t heard of Zoya until recently — it’s a vegan nail polish and they are sold online and in Whole Foods stores. I like this gunmetal grey color. I actually saw a car today that was this exact shade!

P.S. Don’t worry; the kitties seem to be doing better and I hope that after this whole health debacle we won’t have to deal with another issue for a long, long time.

During this low season, I’ve been doing some soul-searching. One thing I did was admit to myself that I needed to get my paper materials straightened out.

After realizing that my necklace was the symbol for ME, I decided to run with it. My new print materials are…

#1: Stickers! I like that I can just slap one of these puppies on any white or grey envelope (or bookmark, or Christmas ornament, or cat) and say, “BAM! Elissa-fied!!”

#2: Handy little 5×7 folded brochures for client consultations. I really like handing over the meat of my pricing in a pretty little card for potential clients to take home. On just 3 sides (because the 4th — the cover, as you can see — is just a pretty picture!) I include package prices, add-on pricing, and basic album information to help them tip the scale on whether they’d like to commit to one when they book.

(I also have chocolate… just because I’m really into these Lindt truffle balls right now.)

#3: New business cards! (The photo is from Rachelle and Stephen’s wedding, if you’re curious.) As you can see, I keep it minimal. I want people to get to know me through my website and blog first, and contact me through the internets. I realize it’s a little weird not to include extensive contact information on a business card, but cards get passed from hand to hand, so if someone got my card from a friend-of-a-friend and emailed me out of the blue expecting a certain look, and seeing my work at a consultation and realizing that my style is nothing like what they want… well, we just wasted time for both of us.

It’s better this way, I promise :)

Still on the list: custom thank-you cards! An Elissa R ink stamp and return address labels! A custom nail polish color! (Just kidding on that last one.)

Sources: Business cards are the small double-sided rep cards from WHCC; brochures are the 5×7 press-printed wide-horizon boutique cards from WHCC; the stickers are Moo.