After the wedding ceremony, we had our photo/video session.  It’s generally referred to as the photo session/cocktail hour, but since video plays such an integral roll, especially in my wedding, I’ll call it the photo/video session.

Kristi Odom, of Kristi Odom Photography was a fantastic photographer to work with.  Not only did I love the end result - the photos I have and am sharing on these blogs - but, and maybe more importantly, she was a pleasure to work with on the day of.  Of course I have to remember I wasn’t “working with” her that day, as I have done on many weddings.  I was simply the subject of her work, but she, and her assistant, Christopher Yost, were both fun to be around, professional, and didn’t  get in the way of anything we were doing that day - yet somehow came back with great photos.

Then, of course, there is my video.  I obviously couldn’t shoot this one myself so I used my associate videographer, Mike Alvarez, to capture the day.

I did edit the video myself, I must admit, but he gave me so many great shots to work with and I was so excited when I saw the footage.  I also have to confess that I cried when I watched the video of Bart and I saying our vows.  There is something about reliving that moment, something about the way video brings that day to life, that is moving in the way nothing else can be.

One more point I want to make about the photo/video team that surprised even me, and I have been to probably a thousand weddings, is how much time you end up spending with your photographer and videographer.  I have done this a million times at weddings I have shot, but never experienced it as a bride before.  You spend five minutes, maybe ten, with most of your guests during the course of the day, but you spend thirty to forty minutes with your photo/video team.  I was surprised by that, but also so happy that I had chosen to work with such a great team.  Kristi, Chris and Mike are all so pleasant and I had a lot of fun “hanging out” with them.  Just a word to the wise, make sure you like your photographer and videographer, because you will see a lot of them.

You can see from the photos and the video on this page what a great job the photo/video team did - and how great Bart and I looked - but a big part of what made those images so beautiful is the setting.  Stonewall Golf Club was a great venue, but the access they have to Lake Manassass provided an incredible backdrop!  I also have to say, the food was great.  We were so happy with the choice of venue and working with Jennifer Mott and Jeanna Hilton during the booking and planning process was so easy.  They were always prompt to reply with answers, and everything just ran seamlessly at the reception.

A big part of that, of course, is due to our deejay, Wayne Boyland, of A Sound Plan.  Wayne was so helpful in giving us music to choose from for all of our main dances, in advance of the wedding, of course.  On the day of, he kept the reception moving along, the guests dancing, and played all our favorite music.

Last, but not least, we have the cake.

I have been friends with Mary and David Supley-Foxworth, of MallowDrama, for a few years now, and it was really a no-brainer when it came time to choose my cake maker.  They are great friends to have for many reasons, but one of them is that I have gotten to taste so much yummy cake over the years.  When it was time for us to choose our cake flavor and design, they brought over a ton of samples of flavors and icing and then suggested and sketched out an original design for us.  We had a layered cake of bananas foster and chocolate espresso and I only wish I got to have my cake and eat it too because it was so pretty I didn’t want to cut it up, but it was so yummy I wanted to eat it all!

I had a wonderful wedding.  From the planning to the photo and video keepsakes, it was a great experience.  And, of course, I get to keep the very best part until death do us part.

Wedding Team:
Hair: Jen Erk, Studio 61
Makeup: Kim Giammaria, Beauty Mark
Flowers: Elegance & Simplicity
Minister: Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, UUCF
Ceremony Music: Eric Waters, MSE Productions
Photographer: Kristi Odom, Kristi Odom Photography
Videographer: Michael Alvarez, Jessica Pi Productions
Cake: MallowDrama
Deejay: A Sound Plan
Reception Venue: Stonewall Golf Club

As you can imagine, I have a lot of friends who work in the wedding industry, and only one wedding to go around.  If I could, and my now husband would put up with it, I would get married three times at least just to be able to work with all the wonderful vendors I know in this area.  Alas, I am sure he would not put up with it and so I had to choose.  It was very difficult, but I ended up with the best wedding team a girl could ever hope for.

I have listed everyone I worked with with at the end of this post.  They were all fabulous and I highly recommend every one of them, so please follow links to their websites and hire them for all of your weddings (especially if you are lucky enough to have three or more!).

But I need to say a few words about all of them, because it really was a fantastic wedding and I hardly had to do anything but show up.  Turns out I have a lot to say, so this blog is going to come in part 1 and part 2.

First of all, my hair and makeup team.  I am not a girlie girl and you don’t want to let me near a hair dryer or a makeup kit, so I knew I needed some extra help.  I have been going to Jennifer Erk Reed, at Studio 61, for about five years.  I first got her card at a wedding I was videotaping because she did such a fantastic job on the bride’s hair.  She does a great job cutting and coloring my hair on a regular basis, but she really blew it out of the park with the hair style for my wedding!  She also did the mother of the groom’s hair, who looked gorgeous from head to toe, but especially the head.

And, of course, I loved my makeup as well.  It was certainly not something I could’ve done myself, so I hired the lovely and talented Kim Giammaria, with Beauty Mark.  Even though I was running late due to - you guessed it - traffic, she was very calm helping get my makeup done half an hour before my ceremony was going to start, and it looked great the whole day through.

In the following video, I made sure to include live audio from both the procession and the recession because Eric Waters, a guitarist with MSE Productions, did such a fantastic job.  I married a Robinson so the recession song was particularly key and, even though it wasn’t on his playlist, he learned it especially for my wedding.

As you can see, I shortened the video of the ceremony considerably. Not so in the Blu-Ray disc we have at home. It was such a beautiful ceremony that I kept in almost every moment for our own video. Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, the minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fairfax, did such a fantastic job writing a very personalized ceremony. We had met with her several times before the wedding day and she really brought so many unique-to-us tidbits into the ceremony that Bart and I were both on the verge of tears the entire time. And yes, I giggle when I am trying not to cry, so if any of that comes across in the video of my vows, it’s a nervous habit.

The last vendor I have room for in part one, is someone else who really added beauty to the day. I have been friends with and known Katie Martin, of Elegance & Simplicity, for six or seven years. I have videotaped so many weddings where her team did the floral arrangements that I just had to ask her to do my wedding. Now, I need to point out, or Katie will kill me, that the sea grass and shell on the podium behind us during the ceremony was not her work. (It just happened to be in our church on the day of our ceremony.) We were conservative with our floral order and just had Katie do the two bouquets, which were gorgeous beyond belief, and the boutonnieres. For our reception, we wanted something eco-friendly and alive, so Katie suggested live, potted herbs for the centerpieces, which was a fantastic suggestion especially since they doubled as party favors.

Wedding Team:
Hair: Jen Erk, Studio 61
Makeup:  Kim Giammaria, Beauty Mark
Flowers:  Elegance & Simplicity
Minister: Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, UUCF
Ceremony Music:  Eric Waters, MSE Productions
Photographer:  Kristi Odom, Kristi Odom Photography
Videographer:  Michael Alvarez, Jessica Pi Productions
Cake:  MallowDrama
Deejay:  A Sound Plan
Reception Venue:  Stonewall Golf Club

The reception was at the Decatur House. I love videotaping there, especially when they have the outdoor tent set up. It’s a great space and provides a beautiful backdrop for a beautiful day.

This couple had a great wedding, but with such a top notch team of vendors, I can’t imagine how it could’ve been anything but perfect.

Contact Tom Van Veen:
thomas@documentaryassociates.com
301-758-3085
www.documentaryassociates.com

Contact Elegance & Simplicity:

301.656.5560
800.768.8814
Twitter: GreenWed + EcoBeautiful
www.eleganceandsimplicity.com
www.eco-beautifulweddings.com

“Hi Jessica,
Thank you so much!!! We LOVE the wedding video! It made everyone cry all over again and you caught all the wedding day details I was hoping to see. Is it possible to get 2 more copies of the DVD?
Thanks!
Allison
P.S. Is there anywhere in particular you’d like me to write a review for you?!”

Check out this recap of their beautiful day. Maybe it will make you cry.


We are not supposed to have favorites, but this wedding was one of my favorites of the year. Allison and Brian were a pleasure to work with. Their ceremony was made unique with personal thank you letters to their families and promises made to each other. The River Plantation, where the ceremony and reception were held, was gorgeous, as were the bride and groom. To top it off, I got to work with two of my favorite wedding vendors - Kristi Odom, of Kristi Odom Photography, and Kelley Cannon, of Kelley Cannon Events.

Check out Kristi’s photos. Her style is professional and fun and that’s what working with her is like.

Kelley Cannon, after planning a wonderful event, had this to say about the wedding:
“Allison & Brian definitely put a lot of thought into all the details of the wedding (which as a planner, you know I appreciate!), but one of things that I loved the most about the day was the heartfelt emotion and personal touch they incorporated into their ceremony. Allison’s uncle officiated the ceremony and they included personal addresses to their parents, vows they wrote themselves (which made just about everyone- including me) laugh and cry. They also had a close friend sing a beautiful song (“Feels like Home to Me”) in the middle of the ceremony. A lot of times in the flurry that is wedding planning, couples can lose focus of the reason they are planning the celebration, so I thought that was really special.”

Allison and Brian chose to see each other before their ceremony. You can see their pre-ceremony photos as well as some beautiful decorative touches set up for the ceremony in this video:

To discuss wedding planning with Kelley Cannon, check out her website or call her at (703) 477-5111.

To see more beautiful photos like the one below, check out Kristi Odom’s website.

When it comes to referrals, I have a lot of great people to choose from in nearly every category. I try to find out the bride’s tastes, budget, and concerns, and then recommend the most fitting vendors for her needs.  Often, those vendors are fellow members of The Bliss Collection, Northern Virginia’s finest wedding professionals.

The mission of The Bliss Collection is to promote the development and growth of member businesses within the Northern Virginia wedding market.  Each member of The Bliss Collection has to be asked to join and approved by majority vote, so you know that all of the vendors in The Bliss Collection get along great and respect each others work.

I am honored that I was recently voted, for the second year in a row, President of The Bliss Collection, and am excited for us to grow over the next year.  Our newly elected Vice President, Mary Supley Foxworth, of MallowDrama, has been a great help in planning some of our internal education as well as events we have set for the rest of the year.  Stay tuned.  You will be hearing a lot more about The Bliss Collection in the coming months.

I love to see what photos come out of the same wedding that I videotape.  We are capturing the same event, usually side by side, but what a photographer captures and what I capture are often very different things.

Of course video has movement and sound, and photography does not, but that’s not the only difference.  When you look at a video and compare it to photos from the same time frame, you can also see a stylistic difference.  I have an artistic eye.  Tom does as well, and we each make creative choices throughout the day.

I love the choices Tom makes.  his photos are always beautiful and I look forward to working with him again in 2010!

I recently sat down for coffee (well, tea, really) with Andrea Jacobson of The Observatory.  Andrea and I are both members of the DC Couture Wedding Consortium as well as the DC Green Wedding Consortium together.  We had a great talk about the wedding business and bigger things, like life in general.  I had a great time and the best part was when Andrea shared some of her current projects with me.

The Observatory, as you can see from these photos, does amazing work.  Andrea is not only the owner, but also one of the photographers.

The photographers for The Observatory are all unique, yet they all shoot documentary style.  Furthermore, as you will see if you visit ObservatoryPhoto.com – is that they all like to watch.