I haven’t been blogging as much as I should be lately.  Life has been crazy.  Between weddings, portraits, and corporate work, I’ve been working non-stop for what feels like forever.  I’m still planning on going back and doing blog posts for all the weddings I shot last year, but most of them won’t be full posts simply because I don’t want to fall behind on all the awesome ones I’m shooting this year.

I had the pleasure of shooting this wedding with my good friend Angie, owner of Todd Studios Photography.

This is the story of Katie and Mike’s beautiful fall wedding.  I had been looking forward to this wedding for quite a while because Katie is a wedding planner (and a damn good one at that if I do say so) and runs her own wedding coordination and planning company, Simply and Forever.  Any photographer that has worked with a good planner will agree that they are worth their weight in gold when it comes to making the day go smoothly.  She had every last detail figured out, and the day went as smoother than we ever could have hope for.

We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.  It was an unseasonably warm Saturday in early November.  The trees still had some leaves on them giving us some beautiful orange and red colors throughout the day, and we didn’t have to worry about bundling up while we were outside getting our shots.  The weather especially worked to our advantage around sunset, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

We started the day downtown at the Westin St. Louis with the girls getting ready…

In case you didn’t realize this about me, I am in fact a guy.  I like to think I dress well and know a fair amount about men’s fashion, but women’s fashion, on the other hand, is completely foreign to me.  Katie had this really cool pair of Kate Spades.  When we first arrived, I commented to Angie, “Oh, those shoes are really cute.”  To paraphrase, her response was “Uh yeah…… those are Kate Spades.  You bet your ass they’re cute.”  I’m slowly but surely learning more about what is “in” in the world of women’s fashion.  I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing….

Once everyone was ready, we headed to Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood for the ceremony getting in some quality time with Mike and the guys beforehand and of course, a little more time with the girls.

So remember earlier when I said the perfect weather especially played well into our plans?  Well here’s why.  You don’t typically want to ride a giant metal, electric wheel atop a building downtown when it’s wet, cold, or windy.  Although I doubt wind or cold would’ve stopped these two.  Despite being somewhat scared of heights (well not so much the heights but the falling from said heights), we went to roof of the City Museum in Downtown St. Louis to ride Big Eli, a 4-story ferris wheel several hundred feet in the air with a view that you have to see to believe.  This was definitely one of the most challenging sets of photos I’ve ever had to take (to any photographers reading this, I highly recommend having two bodies as you don’t want to be switching lenses when you’re swinging in a little cart 300 feet in the air), but it was definitely worth it and I absolutely love the results.

After a short party bus ride, we arrived at the reception at the Westin St. Louis for some drinks, dinner, and dancing.