With that out of the way let me tell you about the wedding!  Here are some teasers from our May, 22nd wedding of Beth and Matt.  The day couldn’t have been nicer and they were both fantastic to work with.  From a photographer’s point of view the wedding was a bit of a challenge.  You see, in this day and age there are so many images that our clients expect to see.  Whether it’s ‘bride looks up into lens from seated position’ or ’shot of the groom that somehow incorporates his lifelong passion for curling,’ there are images that brides and grooms want to feel as though they have a complete photographic record of their special day.  Beth and Matt stressed they wanted none of that!  Photojournalistic with no excessive frills, period.  Well, the Strawberry Road team did a great job of catching that and with some gentle coaxing, we even got some posed shots that I think they will be thrilled to have!  Oh, and for those of you who think you know how to rock, the last image proves you can’t rock THIS hard!

Creating your interfaith wedding ceremony can feel like a huge challenge. Unlike couples from the same religion, you cannot just use a standard ceremony and be done with it. You need to create a new ceremony that is relevant to both of your traditions. While it can feel overwhelming, this challenge is really an opportunity to create something that truly symbolizes the unique personality of your love and marriage.

The simplest way to create an interfaith ceremony is to start with a basic wedding structure and embellish it with traditions you both hold most important. Both partners should write down everything they think should be in the wedding — every tradition that feels necessary. They should then go through their individual lists and explain the meaning of each item to each other. This is especially important for religious traditions that your partner may know little or nothing about. Try to explain why each tradition feels personally important to you, avoiding generalities like “it’s always been done this way”, or “I just like it”. The more you can explain, the better you will both understand each other, and the better your ceremony will become.

As you describe your ideal wedding to each other, you will begin to combine ideas, finding areas of agreement and disagreement. You will begin to learn what traditions are important to you as individuals, and as a couple. When my wife and I did this, we discovered that some traditions we originally considered essential really had no meaning to us once we tried to explain them, while other little-known traditions suddenly felt very important. So be ready to talk, compromise, and learn how to balance each others needs, concerns and ideas.

Eventually, you’ll begin to whittle down your long list of ideas into a workable ceremony. When my wife and I planned our wedding, we ended up combined different aspects of the Jewish and Catholic wedding traditions. We had two friends sing a modern version of the Seven Blessings. Another friend read a translation I wrote of the popular “Love is patient, love is kind” passage from Corinthians. We stood under a huppah as my cousin the priest and our rabbi both gave their blessings. I fell in love with the Jewish tradition of the ketubah, and being an artist, decided to make one for us, which the rabbi then read to our families. We lit a unity candle, then stomped a glass. Some might find this kind of ceremony a little crazy or inauthentic, but we loved it and it fit us perfectly. It wasn’t a Jewish wedding or a Catholic wedding — it was our wedding.

Our crazy combined ceremony worked to bring our two families together in a beautiful and special way. Each side could relate to part of the ceremony, and also share the experience of something new. We explained the traditions throughout the ceremony, in simple terms, so that everyone could appreciate the parts they weren’t familiar with. And in the end, our families loved it as much as we did. It let us honor our religions and families while defining our own newly combined values, and began to establish what it would mean to live together as an interfaith couple.

Daniel Sroka is a fine art nature photographer and the owner of Modern Ketubah. He creates modern fine art wedding ketubahs from his abstract photographs of flowers and leaves for interfaith, Jewish, and multi-cultural couples.  He also writes a blog about his experiences as a full-time artist.

The fabulous Jen Opkea is back!  You may remember her from the Brow 101 article she wrote for us a while back.  This time Jen shares her tips for achieving your best wedding look.

The “I Dos” of Wedding Make-Up

So, you want to look like the most beautiful version of yourself when heading down the wedding aisle, right? Here are some tips on what to do from the neck up to prep for your big day.

Build a Portfolio. Start collecting magazine pages of make-up looks that appeal to you.   This will help you identify your style and give your artist a vision of how you want to look on your wedding day.

Keep it Timeless. Your wedding day is not the occasion for you to rock a make-up trend. You would hate to look back at your photos and wonder: “what was I thinking?” Nothing about your hair or make-up should be distracting.

Go for balance. If you like a smoky eye, make sure it’s superbly blended and off-set with pretty cheeks and a softer pink or peach lip. If a bold lip is your thing, minimize the eyes with soft shadow and cake eye liner at the roots of the upper lashes.  Balance is critical since you do not want any feature to “disappear” in a photo. If using bronzer, go for sun-kissed, not dirty. Hit the high points of the face (forehead, cheekbones, bridge of nose, chin) more intensely for a more naturally tanned look. Remember to apply color to the neck since it is typically an area that is lighter than your face and your chest. Lastly, avoid any pigments that are too sparkly or shimmery. You will end up looking like a disco-ball in pictures. Instead, go for “glow”-cream cheek color layered with powder blush creates a beautiful flush for the cheeks. Sweep some colorless illuminating powder along the cheekbone and down the bridge of the nose and-voila!-you have that “look” of glow you see on every celeb in the magazines.

Don’t forget the brows! Eyebrows are a significant and most-oft overlooked area of the face. Go to a professional brow specialist (see my article on “Brows 101”) sooner than later to make sure that your eyebrows are in top form for your wedding. I prefer tweezing to waxing any day of the week but if you must get waxed, DO NOT do it the week of your wedding. The last thing you need is scabbed lids on your big in the event of a mishap.

Love the skin you’re in. Go to an esthetician who will assess your skin condition and prescribe the necessary products to improve your skin texture and skin health. Be diligent about following your daily skincare regime and consider getting a peel (clinical facial) a month prior to your wedding for an added boost. The sooner you get started on skincare maintenance, the better. The last thing you ever want to do is try something radically new-procedure or product- too soon to the wedding. You do not want to be suffering or having any sort of adverse reaction on your big day.

Plan Ahead. Start shopping for hair and make-up artists well in advance (6 months) since good ones book up fairly quickly depending on the time of year. Make sure that you book a trial with each one as an “audition” and be certain to articulate what you want to look and feel like on your wedding day (bring your photos). A professional stylist should be able to execute the look you want and, if necessary, make any modifications so as to best accentuate your features.  Wear the make-up for a day to see how you feel and take a picture to get a “loose” idea of how the make-up will photograph (keep in mind, there is a big difference between amateur and professional photographs). Most importantly, trust your gut. If you feel that, after the trial, the make-up or hair-style is wearing you it’s time to try someone else. Remember, this day is about you and how YOU want to look and feel not your stylist.

SMILE! A beautiful smile is your best accessory and will instantly make you feel like a million bucks!

Jen Opkea is the Lead Makeup Artist at Sarra Beauty Studio (840 Summer Street, Boston, 617.269.8999) where she offers make-up lessons, make-up applications and precision brow shaping by appointment.  She has perfected her craft while working with the top industry professionals including Laura Mercier, Trish McEvoy, Jillian Dempsey and Jeannine Lobell.  For on-location jobs such as weddings and photo shoots please email: jennopeka@gmail.com with your inquires.

The Beauty of Creating your own Interfaith Wedding Ceremony

Interfaith weddings can be the most beautiful of wedding ceremonies. Of course, being in an interfaith marriage myself, I may be biased! But when interfaith weddings combine the traditions and practices of both the bride and groom, I find that they become something special, transcending rote ceremony and becoming a uniquely personal celebration.

The way an interfaith ceremony gets created is the key to its beauty. Couples who are from the same religion can pretty much take their ceremony for granted. They can visit their priest or rabbi, get the template, make a few tweaks, and know they’ll have a 100% legit ceremony. Interfaith couples, on the other hand, don’t have this luxury. They have to creatively blend together the different parts of their traditions to craft a working ceremony.

The challenge of creating a ceremony often makes interfaith couples nervous and full of questions. How do you do it? How do you make it feel “real” enough? Will any of the relatives feel left out? But even though these questions can be nerve-wracking, they are the foundation of what makes an interfaith ceremony so special. Because interfaith couples can’t just take an off-the-shelf ceremony and call it a day, they need to think through every aspect of their wedding, considering every detail. This, I believe, results in a very meaningful and powerful ceremony.

In order to combine two different wedding ceremonies, interfaith couples have to review all of the practices within their religions’ ceremonies, and decide what to keep, what to change, and what to leave out. To do this, they first need to help each other learn, teaching each other about their religion’s traditions, symbols, and ideas about marriage. As my wife and I planned our own ceremony, we didn’t just learn about each other’s religion – we rediscovered our own, often surprising ourselves with what really mattered to us and what didn’t. We then went through each wedding tradition, discussed it, and decided if we wanted to include it in our ceremony, and how. Each part of our wedding was therefore a conscious choice. Each part of our wedding was born out of a deep discussion, and reflected a shared value.

The creation of the ceremony helped teach us how to discuss our differences, and find our similarities. Explaining the ceremony to our families helped us better understand our decisions and values. Even the experience of being a part of this blended, shared ceremony helped bring our families closer together. So while creating an interfaith wedding ceremony can take a lot of thought and planning, I believe it is worth it, because your wedding becomes a celebration that truly represents who you are.

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Daniel Sroka is a fine art nature photographer and the owner of Modern Ketubah. He creates modern fine art wedding ketubahs from his abstract photographs of flowers and leaves for interfaith, Jewish, and multi-cultural couples. He also writes the blog Open Studio about his experiences as a full-time artist/entrepreneur.

Planning a Wedding: Where to Start

Newly engaged? Congratulations! You’re sporting a gorgeous new ring and a huge smile.  Now what?

The Road to a Wedding

If you’re a little confused about where to start with your wedding planning, it’s no wonder. This could be your first wedding (or at least your first in a long time) and you don’t do this every day. Planning is a major investment in terms of time and money, and can be intimidating.  Consider wedding planning a process, and take it in little steps.

The First Steps

Get organized. Buy yourself a great wedding notebook. Some come with the tabs pre-labeled and pockets for things like receipts and business cards. Also, if you are going to consider a wedding planner, the most valuable time to get one involved is before you’ve done anything irreversible. They can save you time and mistakes.

Prioritize. This step sounds so simple but is incredibly valuable to the planning process and should not be skipped. Make a list of every possible category of services you could use at a wedding, from baker to transportation. Give the list to each person whose opinion truly matters (that’s you, your fiancé, and any parent or family member who is contributing a significant amount of cash).

Each of you should rank, from highest to lowest, how important each category is to you. Then compare lists. If they are vastly different, have a frank discussion about why they mean so much (or so little) to you and try to come up with one family wedding priority list that accurately reflects the combined values.  You will use this list throughout your wedding planning to help make tough decisions. It’s like a mini business plan for your big day.

Set a budget. You don’t necessarily have to break down every single expense just yet, but choose an overall budget. Unless you have limitless cash, you’re going to need to know this before you can legitimately start selecting venues and vendors, so have the talk now and pick a number.

Choose a date. Think carefully about selecting a holiday. It may sound convenient to you, but people like to spend holidays with their families and travel expenses are often higher on holiday weekends.  Also, pay attention to how weather will ultimately impact your plans. Outdoor weddings in the south in August can be pretty painful for guests; same with January weddings in the north.

Choose a location. Factors that determine your venue and even the city or state where you get married could include budget, proximity to family or close friends, features that appeal to your guests and of course, how the site reflects your dream wedding.

Choose your caterer, photographer, videographer and reception entertainer. Why these four next (after your planner and your venues)? Of all of the categories of wedding professionals, these are the four who can only possibly do one wedding per day (except some caterers, but many set limits). There may be others like a high-end wedding designer, or a ceremony musician, but as a general rule, these four are your highest risk for competition. Evaluate them carefully and make your commitments as soon as you are sure.

After you’ve done all of the above, you’re ready to start handling the rest of the details with a little more leisure. Your notebook should have a timeline in it (if it doesn’t come with one, there are plenty online and in wedding magazines) and you should check that timeline weekly to make sure you haven’t missed any big deadlines. With the above complete, you’re in great shape to plan a fantastic wedding day! Congratulations and good luck!

Shayna Walker is a professional wedding planner and owner of Williamsburg Wedding Design. She writes the World According to Weddlady, The Williamsburg Wedding Blog and Life in Weddings.

]]> http://strawberryrd.com/blog/engagement/shayna-walker-on-strawberry-road/feed/ 0 http://strawberryrd.com/blog/news/our-guest-post-with-weddlady/ http://strawberryrd.com/blog/news/our-guest-post-with-weddlady/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:42:25 +0000 Dave http://strawberryrd.com/blog/?p=711 We recently got asked to guest blog for Weddlady.  And…well… ask and you shall receive!  I got to write about the uniquely empowering experience of boudoir photography for women; from our perspective.  It’s always nice to be asked, and even better when you get to see your thoughts being shared   So here’s the post!!!

“We were given: 2 hands to hold, 2 legs to walk, 2 eyes to see, 2 ears to listen but why only one heart?  Because the other was given to someone else for us to find heart in hand.” – Unknown

“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” – Charlie Brown

“Love is a flint that sparks a flame that will either flicker and burn out or continue with a warming glow.” Anonymous