Cherry Blossoms!

If you were to know one thing about me, it should be that I love cherry blossoms.

I mean, love. I have a freaking tattoo of them down my side.

And until 4 years ago, I had no idea what the heck they even were.

When Scot and I first started dating, he mentioned that DC has this huge Cherry Blossom Festival every year. Color me intrigued. So we went.

That's a terrible picture, but you get the idea. The only problem was, I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt.. and it was like 95 degrees out that day. So while the blossoms were gorgeous, I was sweating and cranky the whole time.

The next year, my first year actually living near DC, we tried to go around the "peak season".

Another "eh" picture. It was windy as all hell that year, and it made the day kind of miserable. Again, beautiful views, but the second thing you should know about me? Is that I hate wind. I can't really describe it. Wind seriously pisses me off. (I mean.. there's no need for it. It messes up your hair, makes it hard to walk, and gets sand in your eyes. A nice breeze is fine, but please, hold the wind. Thanks.)

Our third trip to the cherry blossoms, which was last year, was entirely a bust. We missed the peak period, ended up going on Easter (only THE busiest day/weekend for tourists), and it was so hot again, that most of the blooms were already dead. I may have also had like 5 mimosas at Easter brunch before that, and was experiencing a hangover in progress.

Looks like I got.. one whole branch in that picture, in the upper right corner. Not ideal.

But you guys, this year? This year was amazing; we went during the week instead of the weekend, we went in the evening instead of midday (no crowds!), and I had my kick-butt pretty new dSLR camera to take pictures with!!

Get ready for picture overload, because I just couldn't take enough!!

This is what we call overexposed, but how AWESOME does it look?!

Finally.. a decent picture of us with the blossoms!!

Confession: they really don't smell like anything.

I think this one is my favorite :)

Le sigh.. these pictures make me so happy! I'm thrilled that I actually got to use my camera on something other than my cats.. I've been especially excited for spring for that exact reason. I really got to fiddle with the camera and play with exposure, shutter speed, and aperture settings at long last!

Has anyone else ever gone to DC's Cherry Blossom Festival? Or have something similar in your hometown?

How engaging!

Yes, you assumed correctly, our e-pics are finally in! The DVD arrived on Friday (I may have been stalking the mailman for the past 2 weeks) and I threw a couple of them up on Facebook and WeddingBee within 10 minutes or so, naturally. But I would love to share them with you lovely people, too! I gave a little background on the shoot here, but just to reiterate, we walked around the C&O Canal in Georgetown and were photographed by the talented Brooke Bready.

This is honestly one of my favorites, because Scot and I are almost permanently making

weird faces at each other. It's how we communicate ;)

Our "indie/alternative CD cover shot", according to Scot.

This one has a funny story: we were on the corner of M St and Wisconsin Ave at 7pm on a Saturday night.. so yea, it was busy and we were trying not to die with all the people and the cars but still look cute. So as we are being disruptive to all the people walking by, one guy just comes in and starts moving my body and posing me, telling my "ANGLE YOUR BODY IN!" "STEP YOUR FRONT FOOT FORWARD!" "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!" "LOOK AT HIM AND SMILE!" Yea.. there we were feeling like awkward turtles to begin with (poor Scot, this was like nightmare central for him) and this guy just starts yelling at us (in front of like a hundred people) that we suck at posing. He eventually gave up and walked away. And this was the result. Slight fail, I think. Oh well!

This is only a sample of a few of my favorites; what do you guys think?? I really love them.. and Brooke mentioned that she would like to put a few on her blog and/or website, so here's hoping!

Waiting..

...for our engagement pictures that we took on Saturday!

A little back story here:

There is this great email/online service called Groupon, where companies and businesses offer services at a discounted rate in hopes of promoting themselves and gaining business. Example: You get $20 worth of food at a restaurant for only $10, or, in my case, a $425 one-hour photo session with Brooke Bready Photography for the low price of $65. That's a discout of 85%. Craziness!

So I got this gem of an email on April 9th of this past year; I was looking at the amazing deal, Brooke's amazing photography, and the opportunity that I could use this as an engagement photo session! The kicker? I wasn't engaged yet.

Here was the rationale behind my thinking: we were on track to get engaged/be married, the Groupon was good for a year (and if we weren't engaged by then, well then, grrrrr), and if for some reason I actually was not engaged by April of 2011, I would get my friends together and have a BFF glam photo shoot. Genius. And no, I did not tell Scot about buying this for fear of appearing psychotic.

However! It must have been good luck or something, because 9 days later, on April 18th, he proposed. I was able to schedule a session for September with Brooke, admitted my pre-engagement engagement-photo purchase, had a good laugh, and was so excited to get our pictures taken at Brookside Gardens in Maryland.

Then I found out, three days before the shoot (last Wednesday), that Brookside was hosting a "Children's Day" and the park would really not be the ideal place to have an engagement photo session. They basically denied our permit request (not that we really needed one anyway..) and I was kind of bummed. After some searching online, I found some great e-pics of other couples by the C&O canal in the Georgetown area of DC. This was already one of my favorite parts of DC, and figured it would actually be better than Brookside Gardens because of the water, unique architecture, little bridges, etc. So off we went!

We are currently waiting for the pictures (they were just taken two days ago, after all), but I will be eagerly checking the mailbox daily until we get the DVD of our pictures.. which of course, I'll share!!

Where did you guys take your engagement photos? I think I love looking at them more than wedding photos, because you can usually get a good sense of the couple's personality and such :))