People always comment on how wonderful our jobs are – and they are right. We get to capture one of the happiest days of a couple’s life. The first day of the rest of their lives together. But a few days ago, we photographed a very different type of event. Marie, who should have been getting married today, got together with her closest friends in honor of the fiance she lost just a few months ago. She put on her wedding shoes and reception dress, got her hair done, and had some cocktails with the girls who continue to be her support system. As she told me at some point during the night, this is what Rob would have wanted her to do.

There are no words to express how truly devastated we were to receive this news, and I can only begin to imagine what Marie has gone through and continues to go through. But I can say that she is my hero. The courage and strength she’s shown is an inspiration. I cannot think of her without getting emotional. I have put the wonderful thank-you note she wrote us on our fridge for a daily dose of perspective; a reminder of what is really important. And we will proudly display the milkglass vases she got us for our wedding (she reads my blog!) next year (thanks Marie!).

As for today, we remember Rob and send all of our warmest, most positive thoughts to Marie. She told me she had no regrets about how she spent the short life she had with Rob. She said she was thankful that they never took each other for granted. These words will stay with me forever. I pass them on to you in hopes that they may give you perspective too.

To Marie + Rob.

I’m so happy to announce that i’ll be working in collaboration with the montreal children’s hospital foundation to raise funds for the incredible work they do.

This is a cause that we really believe in and we hope you’ll help us spread the word!

A lot of things have been happening here while we were on our roadtrip and even more since we’ve come home last week. We’re heading back on the road this week, to Toronto, for a wedding, two engagement shoots, and two 1-on-1 workshops! We’re really excited about starting up the wedding season again, but in the meantime, here’s a little visual recap of what’s been going on:

We started an online Etsy Shop, with our favorite photos from the roadtrip. 8×12 prints are 20$ !

We’ve been working on launching our separate websites, to promote our non-wedding photography (commercial, pets, babies, maternity). Davina’s website should be up in the upcoming weeks.

One of our favorite blogs, Once Wed, posted a little feature on us:

Kristiaan + Lionel’s engagement shoot was featured on a couple of blogs, WedLuxe (below) and and Andre Winfrye Events‘ blog.

Emilia, of our recent Emilia + Bill shoot, writes her own blog Auburn + Ivory. Their shoot also appeared in several other places. First, on Erin Ever After’s blog…

Then on the Project Wedding, One Lovely Day blog and  finally, on the very cool HiFi Weddings blog

Lastly (for the blogs), yesterday morning, a UK blog,  BeyondBeyond posted Tavia + Ruben’s San Diego engagement shoot.

During our trip, we were also lucky enough to have some of our photographer friends do a session with us. First with Sasha of You + We, in SoCal (one of our favorites is below)

And a couple of weeks later, Romin of SaiaWeddings, came down from Seattle with his little family to spend a day with us in the north of California and do a photo session!

There’s lots more going on so we’ll be keeping you up to date very soon!

In the meantime, here are some photos from the last 5 days. Warning: this post contains A LOT of photographer name dropping. You have been warned!

Sasha, Ross, and Lesya of Flosites and You + We Photography and me, checking out the blog Flosites created for us. By the way, what do you think? you like?

Sasha and I had a hot pepper eat-off on our first night. He kicked my ass.

The Canon vs. Nikon debate lives on. Here Daniel is getting familiar with the video features on the new Canon 7D.

Vlad, sharing some footage with Stacey Doyle, which he can now use as blackmail. (Check out Vlad’s wedding photos, shot by Ben Chrisman, they are amazing!)

During Mystic, we learned that photographers are pretty good singers too. Karaoke was a huge hit!

Sasha explores the wonders of Nikon, this time he tries out a self portrait:

John Michael Cooper (still can’t believe we got to meet him and his wife Dalisa – they are superstars!) using the computer as a lightbox to look at some negatives.

We were lucky enough to spend much of our time with Dave and Quin of DQ Studios. We were huge fans of their work but we had no idea they would be such great people too! This is what we did the whole time we were together:

Our fellow Montrealers, Tim and Angela, couldn’t resist either

A huge highlight was getting Jerry Ghionis to take a portrait of us (this photo was taken by Angela). Jerry’s a huge name in the world of wedding photography so it was quite an honor!

DQ got a piece of the portrait action too. Daniel took this one!

The day we were supposed to be heading back home, we got a call from Ross who was in New York (waiting to catch his flight back to Moldova where he lives), and he managed to convince us to go and meet up with them. We hung out at Jason Groupp’s studio and later had diner with Angelica Glass (LOVE her!), Southern Weddings’ Lara Casey, Jason Groupp’s Lindsey Thorne, and photographer genius Joey Lawrence, among others. We are still on a cloud from meeting all these people we admire!

This is Lara and Joey:

and Lindsey:

and of course Angelica who is seen here on her trusty iphone (the second most popular photographer’s tool, apparently!)

the end!

We are writing to you from Mystic 5 in Connecticut, a big photography conference where we are having the chance to meet with some amazing photographers and hear how many of them run their business. It is really interesting and so much fun!

We’ll be away for a little while so until our next post, we wanted to share some of our New Year’s party photobooth photos with you. We threw a party for some of our closest friends and it was a blast (hats were mandatory). Here are a few of our favorites:

Setting up a shot at 3am in our car…

I stole the bride’s Monolos…

Daniel’s 2 best friends are also photographers, and all 3 went to NYC for a wedding… this photo was at 5am, as they left their hotel for the wedding.

Definitely one of the coolest At Work photos…

Jeremy tends to attract dogs & kids…

And little girls tend to like me!

We are sneaky sometimes…

Even sometimes a little creepy…

And we like to get into weird, uncomfortable positions…

(it’s a good thing i’m flexible… this job requires it!)

Daniel’s been known to sleep on the job…

We’ve been known to be stand-in bridal party members a few times…

Roxanne & Micheal were extremely helpful this summer, couldn’t have done it without them. Here’s a silhouette of Roxanne…

Here’s Mike scouting for lighting… (he’s being a stand-in groom, obviously)

And of course Marlon, in the photobooth…

i have an idea:

After 82 weddings this summer, it was necessary to get out some frustrations…

We survived it! (and our wedding is still on. it’s practically a miracle!)

Hope to see you there!

Daniel and I are really excited these days as we’ve finally reached the end of our crazy, crazy summer! Ok, so we still have 2 weddings in late November, but they’re far enough that we can more or less qualify them as next season. That means that since February 14th, our studio shot 80 weddings… pretty crazy indeed. We had an amazing summer with so many amazing couples and we can’t wait to share our highlights with you… but this will have to wait as we’re still quite busy around here (we’re also leaving for Israel next week…). Since we don’t have any weddings to share with you at the moment, I thought we’d give you a little peak at some of what we’re working on right now.

Since we’re not traditional wedding photographers (this shouldn’t be news to anyone!) most of our couples are happy to take the high resolution files that we give them and to live happily ever after (or something like that) while others enlist our help to display their photos through the more traditional option of an album. We custom design the layouts and try to keep the modern look of our photos throughout the book in order to best highlight the photos and tell the story of the day.

Here’s a peak at a layout that Daniel just finished for Kareen and Dhin:

The front & back covers:

Drum roll, please… congrats to Vera Devera and Fred Boette, the winners of our free photography contest!

They are getting married next fall just across the bridge from San Francisco and we can’t wait to be there! What sold us about this entry were the key words they used: “romantic glam and crafty chic,” zooey deschanel, “retro-pop whimsy,” vintage white milk glass compotes, guitar pick boutonnieres… but what really sold us was their vision for a  carnival-themed cocktail hour, “complete with mini corndogs, a gourmet mustard bar, a kissing booth, a ring toss, vintage photo booth, and caramel apples.” This is exactly what we had in mind when we decided to hold this contest; to get a fun, very different wedding, with a couple who we wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to photograph due to budget reasons and/or location.

Vera blogs about her wedding planning on My $10,000 Wedding so make sure to check that out for some inspiration! Check out the inspiration board they submitted:

I can’t stress how challenging it was to select just one winner. We had some great entries, from all over the place: Montreal, Toronto, Wisconsin, South Carolina, New York… We also had so many deserving couples with great stories and great visions for their big day. I truly wish we could have picked all of them. But then we’d have to move into a cardboard box and that wouldn’t be the best to run a business out of… Anyway, we had a very close runner-up who has been notified and offered a compensation package, so-to-speak . Here was her inspiration board:

All in all, I’d say this contest was a big success and I can’t wait to hold it again next year! Now if you don’t mind, we have to get back to working for money. You know, to avoid the whole cardboard box situation.

This whole thing has been in the works for the last few months and we’ve been working our butts off  but we’re very pleased with how it’s turned out. We have to thank our wedding client/graphic designer extraordinaire, Marc Kandalaft, for designing our logo and serving as a valuable soundboard off of which to bounce our ideas.

First order of business for davina + daniel, announcing our free photography contest winner… which will have to wait until tomorrow!