My last wedding of 2009 was a fantastic reminder of why capturing weddings really is a priviledge.

Lesley was a few years below me at school and her mom was the art teacher. It's been quite a few years since school days and I remember Lesley as a cute kid so I was amazed at the stunning woman she's become.

I was honoured  to be part of their beautiful day which was completely everything a wedding should be. Beautiful family, amazing love and connections between people, gorgeously thought-out details (all made by amazing art teacher mom, Margie), a tangible presence of God, yummy yummy wine and food (including cupcakes with real nutella!), stunning country setting and - most importantly - a chilled out couple completely and passionately into each other.  

From a photographers point of view it didn't hurt that these guys love the camera, gave me time to play and aren't too shabby-looking either. 

Angela and Craig's wedding took place at Diemersfontein Wine Estate in Wellington, on a beautiful day in December. They told me that they wanted something arty, beautiful and abstract - what I love to hear! 

 

A chilled-out, gorgeous couple willing to brave Cape Town traffic, unique black and yellow colour scheme (very cool), SUCH cute shoes, beautiful dress made by Claire's mom, dramatic clouds - what more could you ask for as a photographer?

I'm editing my little heart out finishing weddings from 2009 so no ramblings today, just some images from Claire and Andrew's beautiful day.

Thanks to Jon and Jess for the referral.

This blog entry had to be a humdinger - it's a near-impossible task to select a few images to blog with a 'normal' wedding - but when the bride has THREE outfits, the ceremony is in a stunning Catholic church and the theme of the wedding is 'Over The Top', man it's hard! 

I'm so glad I managed to find some time to head up to Joburg in the mad December season for Swaady and Acha's amazing wedding, African weddings have such a buzz and energy and man oh man did that dance floor literally rock. (I had a serious case of rhythm envy) It goes without saying that 'Swaatcha' are an awesome couple. Thank you for flying us up for the OTT occassion. Thanks too to Busi for the referral, I'm going to have to start paying you commission :-)

Monica Dart came up to second-shoot with me and help negotiate Joburg traffic. I had forgotten how bad it is. And can someone tell me what happened to all the street signs? Non-existant. Thank goodness Joburgers are such a friendly bunch.

Anyhoo, I digress - a 'few' highlights from the day. 

Word out on the street is that the wedding of Khanyi and Chinezi is being shown on Top Billing this evening. Khanyi has asked that I not post too many images yet as there is going to be a big spread in Destiny magazine later this month. So for now, a more abstract mini-sneaky peek of this most awesome wedding at Allee Bleue in Franschhoek 2 weeks ago. Check back in a few weeks time for some more amazing images!

So going back a few weeks to this fabulous wedding at Nooitgedacht with tons of gorgeous details, people, moments, light - pretty much everything was amazing. Even the wind behaved itself. 

Carly and Henry had a very intimate wedding (just the 2 of them) at the stunning Bushmans Kloof in the Cedarberg - which apparently has been voted the top resort in the WORLD. I love intimate weddings as it's all about the couple, plus there is time to play without all the time pressure of a 'normal' wedding.

This will be my last blog entry until sometime next year so I threw my 'keeping it down' resolution out the window (again, sigh) and decided to post a a bumper blog entry!  Carly and Henry, I hope you guys have a great post-wedding party this week - at least you can show your friends something of your day...

To all my faithful blog readers who are still at work and not sunning themselves on a gorgeous beach somewhere or doing frantic last minute Christmas shopping, hope you have an amazing festive season. I feel like I've been shooting non-stop over the past 2 months and will be taking a break from my camera and computer for the next week to spend some time with my gorgeous family and get some much needed R+R.

To say that the blog has taken a bit of a backseat over the past few weeks is a bit of an understatement. It seems that every person and their dog are in Cape Town and want a shoot or to meet up..so between all sorts of cool shoots in some very cool places (does Joburg count?), 2.30am teething cuddles, horrors of Jude discovering that climbing up on ANYTHING is fun and that pens work on walls ... as well as maintaining some inking of social life (do social photographers have one of those?), the office side of things has been a bit neglected.

This week seems to be the humdinger one for nuptials in The Mother City, the Coke-drip may need to be supplemented with some Red Bull.

But for now, a preview of the fantastic Katherine and Andrew's wedding at Lanzerac a  few weeks back. Thank you to Rudi Novem for helping out on the day.

I did a superfun shoot with Christina and Richard from Wedding Concepts and their supercute dog, Sam. You can check out some images from their shoot on my other blog ...

A classically gorgeous wedding in Grabouw with vibrant Indian flavour. Beautiful church, awesome day, so many funky details and the most down-to-earth couple...

Holy canoly, I can't believe that another week has flown by. Last Saturday was a pretty darn cool day. The sun finally came out in the Mother City  and the morning started out with a lomography shoot in Khayelitsha, and then onto a different world of Katie and Ryan's supremely chilled-out wedding at Strandkombuis in Yzerfontein. There's something immensely special to witness how two people just come alive with each other.

 So in theory it's  'mid-summer' in Cape Town at the moment, feels more like the depths of July. I have to say though that I'm loving the moody skies and soft light and blustery wind that create different sort of images to your bright African sunshine.

To any future brides out there - the best thing you can do is chill out, relax and just enjoy your day and each other, which is exactly what Kirstin and Tony seemed to do. A happy bride way outshines any awesome details you've meticulously planned. 

I guess it's true that wind can be quite annoying - as a polite way of putting it -  but one can get some pretty amazing images without making anyone do a funky-chicken dance or hiring a bad-ass wind generator.

The wind wrestled with Taryn's beautiful long veil, shoved wind into faces and jerkily jiggled my camera as I shot. True Cape Town style.

Taryn managed to look amazing the whole way through in her gorgeous Gert van de Merwe creation.

Despite howling wind, protests of 'not liking the camera' and interuptions from traffic and a bergie, we got some awesome couple shots of Kirstin and Tony. Looking forward to your wedding at the end of this week!