Deb & David’s engagement session was like a little tour of Orange County!

We started off at the John Wayne Airport, where Deb flies in when visiting David on weekends. This portion of the session reminded me of the opening/ending scenes in Love Actually where all the loved ones are meeting up at the arrival gate with the hugging and the laughing and the crying (it makes me bawl immediately). It’s easy to forget with the long layovers & uncomfy seats & bad meals, but airports really can be magical places, and John Wayne has become a special place for Deb & David, a way for them to stay connected as they live on opposite ends of the state. They’re actually building their wedding around this travel theme, and I know it’s going to be completely spectacular!

For the second portion we shot at The Lab, the cool “anti-mall” in Costa Mesa, and we finished up at Laguna Beach, which was covered in lovely light and seashells of every shape & size.

I love love loved hanging out with Deb & David – they were so super sweet, so in love, and so relaxed – they had tons of creative ideas but also put their complete trust in us for the photos. Can’t wait until their San Francisco wedding in July!

A couple weeks after the session Deb sent me their save-the-date, which David designed. How perfect is that little airplane-shaped paperclip?

My very first meeting with Dawn over tea at Novel Cafe had me crossing all my fingers & toes that I would get to work with her & photograph her wedding. She excitedly described her vision for the day – a vintage-inspired December wedding that was wintery without being Christmas-y, with tons of details that were infused with Dawn & Craig’s backgrounds & personalities.

But during that initial meeting {which may or may not have lasted an excess of 2 hours}, Dawn also shared with me more about herself on a deeper level – about Craig, about their story, the 17 bicycles they had in their garage, their love of food & travel, their battle & triumph over cancer. I could feel her love for Craig resonate in her words, and I knew the day would be a true celebration & beautiful on every level. Dawn shared the below story on her blog, and I’m sharing a part of it here, as I feel it so sums up their inspiring relationship:

I remember the exact moment I knew that we would be together forever, the moment I realized we were already one. It was the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When I called Craig to tell him the diagnosis his response was a simple “Oh my God, we have cancer”. It was that “we” that has been the foundation for every moment since then.

Though Dawn painted me a beautiful picture of her wedding plans during our first meeting & I watched her ideas unfold via her blog, I was still taken aback by the sheer amazingness of their wedding day. Every aspect was filled to the brim with Dawn & Craig’s personality – there were colorful shoes, tables named after bicycles, vintage books, birch details, and all sorts of wintery genius brought to life by the insanely talented Shawna Yamamoto. And of course there was laughter, there were sweet glances, lots of spontaneous clapping (Dawn’s trademark expression of excitement ;), and above all, an overabundance of love.

Dawn & Craig – Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to share in this exciting time in your lives & capture your most beautiful day. I feel so blessed to have met such kind & amazing people, and to walk away from this with new friends. So excited for you & your many more years of experiencing life as a “we” to come :)

I was pretty much madly in love with Dawn’s birdcage veil & stole, so elegant & stylish:

Love this one of them with their cameras! :)

And the reception. I think I literally forgot to breathe when I entered the room – it was a total & complete winter wonderland, shining bark-laden centerpieces, birch branches, sparkly “snow” – every inch was absolutely magical.

The escort card table alone was a wintery masterpiece:

With the help of a few friends, Dawn folded 1000 cranes, a Japanese tradition for good luck. Cranes are said to mate for life, so this tradition represents longevity & devotion in marriage. Every crane I have ever folded in my life has come out to be an amorphous non-crane catastrophe, so I have IMMENSE respect for Dawn who folded so many, especially out of such tiny paper. She found someone in Hawaii to assemble the cranes into a birch tree and the result was stunning.

Dawn wanted something unique for the guestbooks. She found a handful of vintage upcycled books on Etsy and filled them with lovely marriage quotes (suggested by her blog readers) & their engagement photos. Guests then filled the pages with photos from the photobooth accompanied by sweet messages.

A tradition of jade necklaces from Craig’s mother & aunts:

Venue: Our Lady Queen of Angels + SeaCliff Country Club in Orange County, CA
Florals & Event Design: Shawna Yamamoto Event Design
Lighting: Amber Event Design
Videography: Garner Films
Photobooth: Capital Photo Booth Co (these guys are awesome, they do custom color photobooths!)
DJ: Battleson Entertainment

Oh, the macaron. To think that I was so clueless about your colorful little existence until just a couple years ago, when I had already lived some 20-something years without you. But since that fateful day at Jin, you have consumed my thoughts, sending me on a search to try delectable varieties throughout LA and even prompting a TOTALLY AWESOME dream of a macaron warehouse, that was stacked floor to ceiling with the pastel morsels of heaven. (Of course I woke up before I got to try ANY, because that’s how those things go.)

I’ve been meaning to create this post since the holidays, when I experienced an influx of macaron-ness in my life. It all started when I was “holiday shopping” at Urban, and as always happens when I’m “holiday shopping” a few too many presents for me made it into my basket. As I browsed the book section, my favorite part of the store, I came across this gem:

A book. ALL ABOUT MACARONS. I squealed, flipped through the matte & minimalist pages and hustled it over to the register, where I proceeded to totally confuse the salesgirl. “What IS this?” she said, staring at the cover. And then I got beet-red and suddenly starting thinking… who buys a book on JUST MACARONS? AM I THE ONLY ONE? IS MY OBSESSION THAT OBVIOUS?

And then she followed with: “are these tiny little hamburgers or something?”

…

And I realized it wasn’t that she was questioning why someone would buy a book on macarons, but that she didn’t even know WHAT THEY WERE. I wiped away a single tear of sorrow in remembrance of my pre-macaron life, and proceeded to explain frantically what amazing things they are. And having been converted, she packed up my book & sent me on my way,which leads us to Holiday Macaron Madness, Part II:

So all the reading and the talking and the thinking about macarons had then led to an unfortunate and acute macaron craving. I HAD to have one IMMEDIATELY, but I was at the Del Amo Mall in Torrance, far far away from LA and it’s slew of little macaron shops. And then I remembered that a little (okay, ginormous) chain of coffee houses had recently started offering macarons. So, hopelessly desperate, I went there, and I got these:

You can read reviews on the Starbucks macarons everywhere, but I’ll just tell you, for being mass produced, and flown across an OCEAN, and refrigerated for possibly days and days and weeks and years, they weren’t totally bad. Some of the flavors were better than others and they were chewier than other legit macarons I’ve had, but I like ’em chewy. Either way, I got my fix.

Now here comes Part III, which is, in my opinion, the most awesome part. Fast forward a few days later to my birthday. Scott and I are at home and I’m opening up my first gift of the day, the one from him. From your deduction properties, you can probably already guess that they were macarons. But did you guess that they were FELT macarons? Because that’s exactly what they were:

Oh. EM. Gee. As Scott intercepted me from trying to stuff them all into my mouth, he explained that he bought them from our friend’s Etsy shop, Little Fluff Stuff. Janelle is insanely talented and produces all sorts of general felt food & desserts goodness, that has you in a neverending dilemma between whether they should be cuddled or ingested. {Side note: those perfect blue cups were also part of the gift.. they’re vintage & I LOVE the bright color!)

And that concludes this round of macaron adventures. There will be more to come, especially since a little group of macaron-lovers has formed and we’ve been trying a few different places around LA. Stay tuned for our trip to Paulette!