This was an exceptionally fun wedding for me as it was not only two people I have known since childhood, but my son's old basketball coach and the daughter of one of my closest friends who is also one of my photographers. I knew everyone there, it was ten minutes from my house, and frankly, I had to keep asking myself if I was really working, because it was so much fun.

For people looking for a wedding location in Lake County - I must say this is THE place. It was absolutely beautiful. Most of the decorating and all of the food was done by the family. The very idea of taking on that kind of work is impressive in and of itself, but to have done such an amazing job, well... I have new admiration for everyone involved. It was just gorgeous.

The bride was also gorgeous, which surprised no one, really. The whole wedding party looked great. It was kind of funny for me, though - one of the bridesmaids is also one of my employees, and at one point it sort of dawned on me that I needed to TAKE photos of the father of the bride and the bridesmaid, not avoid shooting them, which is what we are trained to do. (Let's face it, you don't want a bunch of photographs of my assistants in your wedding album as a rule, now do you?). I also periodically had to snatch my camera back out of their hands. I think it was very hard for both of them not to be shooting this wedding with me. But the father of the bride has little or no business running around in his tux taking photos and had to be reminded of that fact, oh... twenty, thirty times. LOL. But he did a great job of being Dad as well. Puffed up like a damn peacock if you want to know the truth. I've seen proud Daddies, but he was definitely right up there.

Its amazing I got anything during the ceremony if the truth be told. Between the crying moms (both of whom are dear to me) and Dad singing a beautiful song to his daughter, I spent the entire thing tearing up behind my camera and hoping like mad that the auto focus was doing its job, cuz my eyeballs weren't!

A note on the front photo of this wedding, which just cracks me up: That is the flower girl, Gracie. She was entirely too thrilled to be dressed up like that and a very interesting subject, as you can see. Well, she was taking her job very seriously, but the bride, being the bride, wanted to make certain that Gracie knew what to do and had just given her a re-cap. That's when she just rolled her eyes, for all the world saying, "Whatever! Please, people, give me a break here! I can handle it, I'm five!" Sooooo funny.