You May French Kiss The Bride

May 2013

Cosmina + Adi

Romanian Photo Session in the Mountains With Beautiful Views

Remember Cosmina and Adi’s wedding? Well, they’re back and this time I’m sharing their couple session’s pictures; how do you like the wheat head flower crown Cosmina is wearing? I hope you’ll enjoy the light and amazing views that Dragos and Laura of Be Light Photography managed to capture once again! By the way, let me share a secret with you: we met with this delightful couple of photographers in Paris a few weeks ago, and something may even come out of this meeting… just saying! In the meanwhile, enjoy this session in the Romanian mountains.

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May 2013

It’s been 6 months (and Time You Know a Bit More About Us)!

It’s been 6 months, we’re more than 2000 on Facebook—please don’t make me talk about my Twitter account…—and I’ve had for the first time someone I was introducing myself to (and truly admire) respond to me “we’ve actually been following your blog for some time”. This has been growing faster than I could ever think; it’s been 6 months, but it seems it’s been forever!

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

It actually all started back in 2011, with our own wedding. Of course, I was back then a total newbie, and had been following the blogs for a very short time… But, it was a total BLAST! And after spending over 6 months taking really close looks at other people’s weddings, I know now we had the few ingredients that will make us love our wedding day no matter what: it was a day full of emotions (to be honnest, wine helped), love, and most importantly, we had FUN! This sounds classic but well, sometimes there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. So, I may today not be particularly proud of everything I prepared (wait for my sister’s wedding), but as much as I love details and wedding design, I wouldn’t change a thing.

SERIOUSLY, WHO AM I?

I realize you don’t know much about me. To simplify, let’s say I’m a researcher in a scientific area close to mathematics (oh you can say it, I’m a nerd), and until a few months, a repressed artist at heart. Starting the blog wasn’t easy, for many reasons that could all be filed under “insecurity issues”. Starting my own project, with everything than can come with it—critics, lack of consideration and respect—possibly amplified by the fact that I’m using a language that’s not even my native one, could have broken me. I’m not quite sure I realised this back then but well, fortunately this is not what happened! I actually had to deal with very little negative feedbacks (to not say I was greeted like a ROCK STAR – seriously guys, thank you!), and I may even have saved enough nice words now to face the inevitable coming critics… [Sorry but who wouldn't brag about quite a few mentions on this blog (yeah... that's 7 links) at such an early stage of existence, and then this one?] You’ll also notice I finally found some courage to talk about my own self.

Starting this blog was a life-changing experience, something that, no matter where this is ever gonna lead me, is making me a different and hopefully better person. When I wrote my first email to ask if could publish this wedding, that for this very reason will always be special to me, I didn’t have a proper email address, nor a website to show! Then we launched it, and this was so very comparable to a starting gun for me. In the first miles, I was literally short of breath (the excitement wouldn’t let me get some sleep, and I had a headache for weeks!). Then, I realised this is not a sprint, it’s a race that hopefully will last for some time, and I’d better save my effort! But, all good things come to those who wait, the situation eventually became stable: I am now a cool-headed blogger, and I am happy with the direction this project is taking!

6 MONTHS IN REVIEW

It was important to me that the accent be put on photography and I’ve been hearing this became pretty clear to you also. Good! Besides, I have to say I’m not confortable being some kind of “wedding guide” for all you future brides and grooms; I don’t want to give you specific advice and I actually think nobody should. Quite paradoxal for someone running a wedding blog, I hear you say? So here’s my one advice, from me to you: run away from good advice! :) It’s your day anyway, your personality… The thing is, I truly believe in your own creativity and think that the photos here speak for themselves. There’s a lot to get inspired by in every wedding we publish, I really just want you to take a look at it, pick what touches you the most, and create your own thing on this basis!

So, I am personally happy with the direction this project is taking “technically” speaking, but also from a human/ relational point of view: I feel very honored to be part of this little world, have an excuse to contact some of the best photographers (and coolest brides and grooms) in the world, start a chat, and sometimes even end up making new friends! I also want to add that, as a quite new and necessarily less followed blog, having posts of quality that were not already reserved for the bigger blogs was for me a challenge, that ended up less complicated to achieve than I thought. Of course I’ve been ignored and rejected sometimes and maybe I just like to focus on different things compared to most wedding blogs, but my point here is that I was quite surprised with the amount of people that actually believed in me straightaway. Life isn’t perfect though, not even for wedding bloggers, and I also happened to be involved in a few less pleasant situations… But, more about this some other time, lessons were learned and I truly believe all this is making me a more humble and respectful blogger – never forget where you come from!

CONCLUSION AND OPEN QUESTIONS

For those who read this until the end, I would love to have your feedback on the blog and our orientation so far. Please, go ahead, remember I’m now a cool-headed blogger! ;)

As for me, I’d like to end up saying that these past 6 months, I’ve had the time of my life, and I owe it all to you!…

May 2013

Sonia + Tony

Parisian Jazz Musician Wedding

If I say Paris, you’ll probably start telling me how beautiful the city is, you’re gonna mention one of those famous jazz clubs and the way all couples look so in love everywhere… But you know how it is when you actually live in such a place; you don’t really take the time to enjoy these little things that seem to make the city so special to everyone, and end up thinking all those stuff are for tourists. But when I was preparing this blog post it hit me again: Paris is fabulous! And if you like all the clichés about this city, you’re probably gonna enjoy this post.

Second, when you’re preparing your wedding and decide to go for a music themed wedding because, say, you’re both musicians, there are many options. One of them is to put miniature instruments on your tables, old vinyl records in a corner, and all kind of music-related details you can think of. Which is great. One other choice is to decide to live your theme and be the detail that will make your wedding so special: Sonia and Tony rented a houseboat to host their party, had a very intimate/ jazzy atmosphere, and during the night, started an ox with some musician friends of them! Now how does that second option sound? Photos: Photography by Winter.

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Let me tell you a bit more about today’s couple, or even better, let the bride tell us a bit more about them.

We’re both jazz musicians and met at a concert organised by the Conservatoire. At the end of the repetition, we went to a restaurant and I found myself in front of Tony at the table. After 2 minutes, he said something really funny and quite unexpected. I looked up… a few weeks after we were inseparable, and here we are now beating all odds (we were both against marriage) a bit more than 5 years after that night, married! Never say never, as for me, I even had a veil.

And here’s about all those “music-related” moments of the day.

In the end it was an artists’ wedding – we had MC friends rapping a very beautiful text at the city hall (they even managed to involve Tony and everyone ended up following their lead), and my friends from the batucada waited for us outside with their drums and literally set the court of the city hall on fire! On the houseboat later that night we played a few songs with our friends who brought their instruments, and our dear friend Chris—DJ and funk singer—made everyone dance like mad to songs inherited from the 60s… This is what I like to call a party.

Name one thing you regret…

No regret! Everything was as we wanted it to be.

… And one thing you’re really happy about/ proud of.

It was a wedding with a lot of friends and very few family members, which is what we wanted. Our families were the best: no pressure, no expectation, no one telling us what to do. We really appreciated that, even if this may be the result of long years of “we’ll never get married” speeches… But still, it was a quite unconventional wedding in the sense that we got rid of everything that didn’t make sense to us: no paper invitation but an email instead, no traditional sugar-almonds, no wedding cake, no church, no wedding list, no seated dinner, no table map, no folding paper crane workshop… The least possible stress for a maximum of pleasure, that was our idea. (But hey, I’m not saying we didn’t work on that wedding!)