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The day began with a ceremony at Our Lady of Grace church in Westport, Massachusetts. The day began with some rain and an overcast sky, but shortly after we got to the church, the clouds parted and the sun came out! Shortly after we started setting up, Seth and the rest of the groomsmen arrived in their fire department uniforms and greeted guests as they started to arrive to the church.

After the ceremony, the bride and groom had a brief receiving line and then hopped into a fire truck on their way for formal photos at the fire station where Seth, the groom, was on staff. The fire station had a great “yard” that overlooked a large field that gave us an awesome background for formal photos. Add than in with the bright red firetrucks and we had some great striking photos.

From there, it was off to the reception at Brantal’s Hall in Tiverton, RI for some great food and some awesome dancing! Overall we had a great day, and it was one of the funnest weddings that we shot all year!

The Ceremony was held at St. Catherine’s Church in Westford, Massachusetts – a beautiful church that had many great places for formal photos outside of their beautiful stone church and facade. The ceremony was beautiful, and had a great area for us to get some great shots of the couple during the ceremony.

From there, it was on to Stow Acres Country Club in Stow, Massachusetts. A beautiful golf course/reception hall that gave us some beautiful shots for formal photos by ponds, old barns, and beautiful trees. Once inside the reception hall, we had a great dinner followed up by a TON of great dancing.

Shot at the Gardner PACC

The wedding and reception was held at the Pavilion on Crystal Lake in Middletown, CT. The ceremony was done outside in a nice wooded section of the complex in a gazebo, it was a very windy day – but no one seemed to mind – as the ceremony was beautiful and went off without a hitch!

Once the ceremony was over, the Bride and Groom had a great formal photography session on the beach at Crystal Lake. They had timed it perfectly, so that the sun was just setting as the formal photos were being taken.

Then it was off to the reception! And the guests did not disappoint, giving us great dance footage and playing to the camera all night long!

The day started as Alisa’s parents house as we shot her getting ready for her big day. It was amazing how organized they were, when we got there Alisa was as calm as could be, hanging out with her family and bridesmaids – just counting down the minutes until she got in the limo and headed down to the park where the wedding was to be held.

Alisa and Justin picked a really nice spot to get married, Bird Park in Walpole. Bird Park is interesting as it’s a public park, but they did have a nice private band-stand to serve as the backdrop for the ceremony. The great thing about it was that it had a trail that ran into it from the back with beautiful stone bridges that made for some awesome photos. This is where the Bride and Bridesmaids hung out before the ceremony started.

Once the Ceremony was over, we decided to utilize the beauty of the park for some photos, before making the trip into Venezia in Boston for the reception.

This wedding was a lot of fun for us, and they had two beautiful locations for their ceremony and then reception! Couldn’t have picked a better day for a gorgeous wedding!

Kristen and Samuel picked a great place to get married, right on the campus at Stonehill College in Easton, MA. The ceremony was held in Chapel of Mary at Stonehill, a beautiful chapel that is “in the round” with the alter in the center of the room. Because it was a round chapel, it allowed us to get shots from behind the alter allowing us to get great close-up shots of the Bride and Groom during the ceremony.

Once the Ceremony was over, we took over Stonehill’s campus for some great formal photos on the quad. We got a lot of curious looks from the students walking by – but it just added to the great atmosphere of shooting on a college campus.

The Wedding Party goofing off during photos

From the ceremony it was off to Brook Meadow Country Club for the reception. Brook Meadow is beautiful, with a great upstairs function room, and a beautiful large deck that overlooks the golf course. After they served a great meal, it was off for dancing and partying through the rest of the night!

Kristen and Samuel during the Cake Cutting

This wedding was a lot of fun for us, as we knew most of their friends and family from shooting their close friend Kara and Dominic’s wedding back a year ago. We love doing weddings for family and friends that we have worked with in the past – its a lot of fun for us, and since the crowd is already familiar with our shooting style, they are more open to open up to the camera. In fact – we were hired for Kara and Dominic’s wedding based on a referral from a co-worker of Kara’s who’s wedding we shot. We are proud to say that over 60% of the weddings that we have shot over the last two years has come from referrals from past customers!

Again congratulations to Kristen and Samuel!

Since I am a huge dog lover, I took the challenge. The budget was very much bare bones for a project of this magnitude. The shoot was going to take place at a three day training seminar that the head trainer, Pat Perry, was going to give. What made this project difficult was that it was going to be a multi-camera shoot, using a variety of dogs (Always unpredictable) and live firearms.

Oh, and did I mention that in day two of the shoot – it decided to POUR! Now we had Mud, Wet Cameras (cameras don’t like water) and a lot of smelly wet dogs!
However, despite the weather – the experience was a rewarding one, we shot over 30 hours of footage, and I learned a ton about training dogs.

Editing was a chore on this project – 30 hours of tape takes a LONG time to cut down and put together for a completed DVD. Needless to say – this video took us over a year (working nights/weekends in the middle of our load of weddings as well) to put together. Finally, earlier this year we had a final deliverable product.

Since the deliverable, we haven’t really thought a ton about the video, as we had our wedding coming up as well as our clients wedding videos to edit down. But while shopping for some Christmas items, we discovered that our dog training video – Training Spaniels to Hunt – A Seminar with Pat Perry – we made with dog trainer Pat Perry is available on Amazon.com, and the reviews are great! 5 our of 5 stars!

” 5.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive training DVD, July 8, 2009
By Dawn Smith “dawnand3dogs”
This is a training DVD you won’t want to miss. Pat Perry takes you through the highlights of a three day spaniel training seminar, introducing you to handling techniques, demonstrating essential training drills, and offering problem solving ideas for some of the common glitches in training that you might run into when working with your own dog. This training DVD is easy to follow, and spaniel lovers will surely delight in watching the beautiful dogs at work!”

Here’s a clip from the video:

Its just awesome to put so much work into a project and see it pay off in the end!

I got married! The big day was on August 22 at the Overlook Hotel (Masonic Home) in Charlton, MA. Yes, this year for us has been really crazy as we were helping our clients with their weddings while also planning our own! Needless to say, the wedding was perfect! Great food, great music and just a wonderful day. Our vendors were excellent. We had Chris Phillips as our Guitarist for the ceremony, and he was excellent! We had two GREAT photographers in Tammy Woodard as well as Tim Mulcahy – our photos came back super fast and were outstanding! Music on Wheels provided the entertainment and kept the dance floor moving, and finally Aaron Cadieux from Big Operations Productions filmed the ceremony for us (and we will be editing it ourselves, once all of our client videos are done for the year).

I always tell my clients is that your wedding day goes by like a blur, but until I lived it myself – I had no idea how right that statement was. We had a short ceremony, a five hour reception, and then an after-party (that went for another few hours) and it just FLEW by. I am just so glad we got the photos and the video to look back on, as there was just so much that we missed!

One thing that we learned is that a big wedding also doesn’t have to cost a ton either, if you plan things out and are not afraid to get your hands a little bit dirty. Being in the business helped up out, and we know what (though experience) what was needed and what was typically wasted at weddings – so we planned our budget around that. No special favors (we donated to a animal shelter in lue of favors) – Flowers were bought the day before at a super-market and put together by the bride and a friend. We had two great photographers and two videographers that we were able to barter with – helping to cut down our costs. All favors and decorations were made by hand by my talented wife – saving hundreds in paper costs. Overall, our biggest expense was the food (which was excellent). Luckily for us, The Overlook is not a well known wedding location, and thus prices were very reasonable. So, in the end – we spend about $7000 total on our wedding. Proving that you don’t need to spend 30-40 grand on a nice wedding – you just need to get ‘creative’ in how you approach your budget.

The Second big news that has kept me from blogging is that I took on a new “day job” as a Senior Web Developer/Designer at a large insurance company. It has just taken me a little bit of time to get acquainted with the new job – and thus stuff like blogging and marketing Lakota Den took a back seat for the moment while I focused on the .

For those that don’t know, I only do weddings during the summer time and on a part-time basis – the “day job” allows me to pay my bills and not have to worry about “getting the next wedding” to pay the bills. Doing weddings part-time also allows us to be fresh and give our clients more personal attention. Since we work with a smaller group of brides, and only do one wedding on the weekends – we can spend a lot more time focused on that one wedding – instead of juggling multiple jobs at the same time.

So those two things are the reason that I haven’t posted in awhile. We’ve been a little busy adjusting to all the new and wonderful things that have happened! I am hoping to get back to posting more often!

We started this beautiful September Day by traveling to Laura’s parent home to shoot her and her bridesmaids getting ready for her big day. Joining us were the photographers from A Wedding Network who helped me with getting the girls ready while also posing them for photos throughout the afternoon.

Laura getting her makeup on before the ceremony

Once the Laura was ready and safely in the Limo, it was a short drive to St. Monica’s Church in Northford, CT for the ceremony.

The Ceremony was beautiful, and the sun lit up the church and all its stained glass beautifully for wedding! While Andrew was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the wedding, he soon calmed down once he saw his beautiful bride start walking down the isle.

Laura and Andrew at St. Monica's

After the ceremony and Formal Photos, it was off to Villa Capri for the Reception!

The Happy Couple with the Bridesmaids

The reception was excellent, with plenty of food, drink, and dancing going on throughout the night! I think my favorite part was the desert spread that was laid out for the guests – there was so much to choose from, and it all looked great!

Laura and Andrew's First Dance

Overall, a wonderful night! Congratulations to Andrew and Laura!