Santa Barbara Dreamin'

Going into all of these festivities, having a wonderful photographer to document the fun along the way was basically #1 on my list. This is a once in a lifetime event, and Mike and I both wanted once in a lifetime photos. We also wanted them to be a certain style - something modern. Not like the photos where in every single one, everyone is posed and smiling awkwardly. No thanks!

Emily gave me a website that listed all of the noteworthy photojournalistic photographers in the area, and I was able to narrow it down to a few choices. We scheduled appointments with four of them in September. The first person we met with was named Frederick. He had a cute little studio in downtown Los Gatos. He works with his wife, and they were both very friendly. They walked us through some of their shots and packages, and it all looked pretty good. I have a hard time evaluating pictures when they are of random people. When my friends are in them, all of the sudden they become much better.

The package that we were most interested in getting included an engagement session as well. We definitely wanted that because, when do you ever have a good excuse to get beautiful photos taken of yourself? You might as well live it up!

As we were talking about the engagement photos, Frederick mentioned that we should take them in a place that was really meaningful to us, like a restaurant or place we met. Mike jokingly replied, "Do you travel to Santa Barbara? That is a place with the most meaning for us." He pointed us to his travel rate, and then said, "I love Santa Barbara - I graduated from college there." Of course, we instantly connected over Gaucho memories and talked about campus and the town a bit. He said that he would love to have an excuse to get back down to SB. And also said, "But you know, I have so many friends in Santa Barbara still that I would love to go and see. If that is where you wanted to go and you go with us, I won't charge you the travel fee. It will be like a mini vacation for me." SCORE!

We left feeling really good about our meeting, and about Frederick, but we wanted to meet a few other photographers as well.

Our second meeting was with another husband and wife team - a recommendation I had gotten from a colleague at work. They showed us scores and scores of albums of their beautiful photos, and asked us a lot of questions about how our day was going to run. I really appreciated their attention to detail, and it was clear that they go into their events with a plan of attack, so to speak. He also gave us a lot of ideas on what to ask other photographers, about lighting, inclusions, etc.

Leaving the meeting, Mike said to me, "That guy talks too much." So, he was off the list.

I emailed back and forth with the two others, but we couldn't really nail down a date that would work for both of us, and one of the photographers wouldn't leave the city for a meeting, so we would have to go to her, which was just going to be too demanding given our busy schedules during that time of year.

We talked and thought back to Frederick. We were both so instantly at ease with him, and felt that he was a very genuine guy who put a lot of detail and thought into what he does. We emailed him a score of questions that we had learned to ask from our other meeting (14 questions, to be exact). He responded within a day to each and every one of them. When we looked at the contract and had questions/revisions, again, got back to us in a day. Mike and I both appreciate efficiency and responsiveness, so we were further impressed and convinced that Frederick was our photographer. We asked him to be there with us on our wedding day.

The next big step was scheduling our photo session in Santa Barbara - which for Mike and I was a dream. We ultimately would have wanted to get married in SB which was the place of so many of our memories. But the travel time was going to prove to be too cumbersome. But, as you will see, Santa Barbara and our time there will be a big part of our wedding - starting with these awesome photos!

We scheduled a date for November, and hoped and hoped and hoped that the weather wouldn't give us too much trouble. Sometimes it is gorgeous in November, and sometimes it is foggy and awful. We were, obviously, hoping for the former.

We decided to ask our good friends Emily and Nick to go with us, because we always have a grand old time with them, and thought it would be super fun for the puppies. They took us up on the offer and we were all set to get to SB on November 13. We decided to extend our trip a bit and leave on Thursday evening and stay with Nick's sister in Templeton. We have been looking forward to this trip for like 2 months!!!

We left last Thursday night around 7:00. We brought SO. MUCH. STUFF. Both Mike and I are super planners, and want to make sure that we don't leave behind anything that we might need. Especially considering that we were having important photos taken away from home - we definitely wanted to have some wardrobe choices, and other fallback options. Plus, we also had to bring Taiko's stuff. I can't imagine how much stuff a baby requires, because Taiko's belongings blow my mind! (Water, toys, food, bags for poop scooping, leashes, towels, etc.) Our middle seat was literally filled to the top of the seat line! (Taiko later discovered that he was able to prop himself up on our stuff and ride with his back legs in the trunk of our Jeep and his front legs on our stuff! See the picture below...

On our first day in SB, we stopped by UCSB to visit a former student who is in his first year. It was great (and a bit surreal) to see the campus, as always. They are constantly building new structures and changing everything. Gosh, I wish things would just stay the same sometimes!

As with many of our favorite destinations, we love to make sure to get a taste of the local cuisine. Mike and I have so many favorite eateries in SB, that when we go back, we plan our trip around meals! Our first night, we ate at a place called Holdren's, which I used to love, love, love! They have this great dessert (which we didn't get to try because we were so full!) of s'mores where you get a bunch of s'more materials (grahm crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows) and you get a small can of sterno lit for you, where you toast your marshmallows. So fun! So, we headed there for dinner, but not before we had cocktails and appetizers at another famous eatery, The Palace. The Palace is a cajun restaurant and so the gentlemen enjoyed a Cajun martini and we had some crawfish and delicious muffins! We took it easy that night and played our new game "Pictionary Man." It was actually pretty hard - the categories and things to draw were a bit out there, but we still had fun.

Saturday we took the dogs to the Mission and to the Douglas Family preserve which is right along the coast. The dogs got to meet a few new friends and run around off leash a bit, which they enjoyed. We then grabbed delicious sammies for lunch, and headed back to the hotel to get ready for our photos.

We wanted to make sure to capture some meaningful places and the essence of SB in our photographs. And, while there are so many beautiful places to choose from, we wanted to make sure that we spent the majority of our tim at the harbor and on the beach, which is where we met and where Mike proposed.

We started our photographs at Paseo Nuevo, on these beautiful Spanish steps. We walked around the area a bit, and captured a few of the signature Spanish style facades, and then moved on toward the harbor. There we took photos in the place where Mike proposed, and in front of the museum, as well as on the breakwater with all of the masts in the back. Our last session was on the beach, where we got some amazing sunset pictures - see the sunset I captured below...

We then went out for another (amazing) dinner - pumpkin gnocchi anyone? So yummy. The next day we all felt like our trip was cut short, and were ready to stay a few more days :( We went out for a delicious brunch, complete with mimosas and bloody mary's (see picture of the monster bloody mary's below!