It’s hard to believe that it’s been two months since our last wedding planning related blog post! But we did not forget about it, on the contrary, we spent all this time still searching for both the photographer and for the right venue. We could have never imagined that the planning would be so difficult from the beginning! We wanted to book the venue and photographer at the same time so that we wouldn’t limit our choice of photographer by the date we set. Sounds like it should be pretty easy, but it sure wasn’t! And so this last week was a big one for us and we finally have a date, a venue, and even the photographer of our dreams.

I’ll start with the most important part… drum roll please… the date of the wedding is….. 9/10/10! We are inviting just 30 people to the wedding and our hopes are that these people won’t mind taking the Friday off as it will allow all of us to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing.

The venue update is next: we absolutely fell in love with both the Ranch from our last blog post and also with the cute villa. It was a tough choice and we had to make a long list of pluses and minuses of both places. At the end we decided to go with the villa! Although both places are absolutely gorgeous, we felt that this venue would be a better match for our tiny wedding.

And lastly, the part everyone has been asking about ever since we got engaged… the photographer! This was honestly the toughest choice we’ve had to make. The challenge was that we both knew what style and type of photographer we wanted and we were absolutely not willing to compromise on it. Fortunately, we wanted more or less the same thing, otherwise we’d have to hire one photographer for the bride and one for the groom :)

We started our search by looking at Bay Area photographers, then at ones in Southern California. What we found is that although there are a ton of absolutely amazing artists in this state whom we adore and even sometimes idolize, their styles were a little different than what we had in mind. So our search circle got bigger and bigger, and we started looking at East Coast and even some Canadian photographers, until we finally found someone whose work we both absolutely admire:

We first learned of Greg Gibson a few years back at one of the photography conventions we attended. I remember that even then we were amazed at his strong photojournalistic approach and constant search for ways to tell the story. We were both beyond happy when he agreed to come out to Napa for our wedding!

Next on the list is the dress shopping and I’ll let you all know how that will go. Until then, have a great week everybody and stay dry in these upcoming storms!

Natasha

As some of you may know, we just got back home after a week in Mexico. We usually prefer to have lots more adventures during our travels, but this time we had a short and relaxing family vacation in one of the big resorts near Playa del Carmen.

As usual, we took a bunch of camera gear with us but after having lugged two big cameras around for a few days, we decided to let it go and leave them in the room. After all, what interesting photo opportunities can you find in a resort? Well, as Murphy’s law would have it, dramatic light happens as soon as you leave home without the camera. Fortunately, I always carry a little point-and-shoot with me, and all the pictures here were taken with it.

An amazing sunset we saw in Cancun:

Our Thanksgiving dinner with Turkey and tropical cocktails:

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! Have a great week :)

When we first learned that Diana and Daniel’s wedding will be taking place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco we knew right away to expect an elegant and stylish day. Their engagement session at Embarcadero was just awesome and we learned that they’re up for pretty much any crazy & creative idea we have :)

On the wedding day we went to the Legion of Honor for portraits and had a ton of fun there! One of the benefits of having a slightly off-season wedding is that you can pick a very popular, usually crowded, location for your photos and still be the only wedding party there. We still had a bit of time left before the ceremony started and we decided to also roam the Palace Hotel for portrait locations.

We love shooting in older San Francisco hotels with their antique benches and sofas, big lobbies, lush greenery, awesome mirrors, columns and curtains. We could literally spend hours and hours with the variety of scenes and backgrounds available.

This Palace Hotel wedding had a Chuppah ceremony held in the Sunset Court where we absolutely loved the beautifully tall domed-glass ceilings.

This hotel simply exudes luxury in every way and the reception at the charming Grand Ballroom was prepped with gorgeous details, a great band, and some colorful lighting which added great colors to the backgrounds of all the reception shots.

As a special performance, a belly dancer was invited to entertain and dazzle the audience with her abilities:

This was the last wedding of the year for Choco Studio and we are happy to have shot such a spectacular event for our season finale. We are very much looking forward to some down time, spending more time with friends, snowboarding in Tahoe, planning our own wedding, and even going to a couple of very tropical destinations :) The break in between the weddings is not for long, however, and next year’s events are starting right up again in January!

To view one more gorgeous Palace Hotel wedding photographed by Choco Studio visit San Francisco Palace Hotel Wedding Photos