Jessica Lemmons Photography Blog, Longview Washington (Wa.) photographer.

Mike, Shannon and I went to Portland a few weeks back for their engagement session.  I seriously LOVE shooting this girl!   You might remember her from these sessions – Shannon’s senior photos,  Trash the Dress Part 1 and Part 2, and then two months ago I photographed her in her sister’s wedding here.  I’m so excited for these two to get married!  They are a such a sweet couple, they even took me out to dinner after the session at a Mongolian Grill (YUMMY!).    Congrats guys!   Can’t wait to photograph your wedding!!!

Nearly two weeks ago I had the honor of photographing Nick and Samantha’s wedding – this isn’t the first time I’ve photographed either of them, you might remember Sam and Nick from their e-session, or Sam from Trash the Dress – part 1 or part 2.  They have been amazing to work with for sure!

Before I go into details about the wedding though, I have to give a HUGE thank you to Nate Yaro for shooting with me.  My husband has been shooting with me for awhile now, but two days before the wedding he had to be hospitalized.   Nate was amazing and said he would help me with just two days notice…..Nate shot with me all last year.  It was a huge relief to have someone who knew what they were doing and knew my routine, shooting with me that day.  Of course I was worried sick the whole day about my husband, so I have to give an extra special thank you to him for helping me keep my mind on the job which normally is no problem, but with a husband in the hospital it was a little harder than normal.   So thank you Nate – It was a huge, major blessing having you there to help. Also – several of the photos shown below are from him….he did awesome!  :-)

So….on to Nick and Sam – we started out the day at Samantha’s parents home getting ready for the day –

While I was busy taking pictures of the girls, Nate headed over to where the guys were getting ready and grabbed some photos of them.

Then it was on to formals -

We had hoped that the rain would hold up for us so we could do some outdoor photos, but the weather didn’t cooperate.  Fortunately though, the wedding was going to happen at Fathers House in Longview, which my office shares a parking lot with.  The office building I’m located in was built in the 20′s and the current owner of the building has kept with the vintage theme in the building’s decor.  So….we decided to hop across the parking lot and take advantage of the crazy carpet and decor outside of my office suite, and the fun furniture in my office for an indoor shoot.

Then (amazingly!) the rain went away and the sun came out, so we decided to run across the street for a quick shot of the wedding party outdoors -

Then it was time for the ceremony -

Nate captured this one with his wide-angle lens.

And then we headed over to a beautiful reception at the McClelland Arts Center

Of course I have many, MANY more photos, but I could go on with this wedding all day, and this is, after all, a preview so I will stop here and make them wait for  the rest.  :-)

Thank you Samantha and Nick for having me as your photographer!  Congratulations on your new life together!

It’s been awhile since I had time to blog about my clients, but I’m working at getting back into the swing of normal life again!

Allie has been a friend of mine for quite a few years, I’m so excited to see her get married!  I’ll be photographing their wedding this June and I couldn’t be happier for these guys.   I seriously can’t wait to be a part of their special day!  Thanks guys!  Enjoy…..

Dana booked me a few months back for her September wedding.  When I first met her I couldn’t help but like her!   She was just one of those fun, happy and energetic girls that you just can’t help but enjoy being around.   When I met RJ last Saturday I could totally see why it was they fell in love!  They were both just happy and fun people, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much during the “formal” section of photographing a wedding.    My abs were more sore than my feet after the wedding.

Their wedding was held at the Lewis and Clark hotel in Centralia.  I loved the venue – it was absolutely beautiful inside, with lots of space for the wedding – they still managed to pack the house with all their family and friends though!

My friend and fellow photographer Cindy did an AMAZING job helping me that day.  She was an absolute joy to work with!

Here’s a few  of Dana at the hotel before we headed over for formals -

The boys

The plan had been for RJ and Dana to not see each other before the wedding, but Dana wanted to do photos ahead of time and also wanted to surprise RJ.  So while I was taking photos of the boys she had one of her bridesmaids give RJ a card. .  While RJ was reading it Dana snuck up behind him with her Dad to surprise him.

The look on his face was priceless!

Then we jumped into the “formals”.

I have to show just one more with the skateboards…..I was laughing so hard when we did this!

Once we finished up with formals we headed back for the ceremony:

The reception was very fun!   Great food, great music and lots of joy!

The cake:

The Rings:

And a few of my final favorites from the day:

RJ and Dana got married last Saturday, it’s going to be a few more days before I get their preview up, but I couldn’t help but post just one.   These two make me smile!

I received an e-mail awhile back from a precious lady in Australia asking me if I would be there to photograph her wedding…and be a witness on her marriage certificate, as there would be no guests!  That was definitely a new one for me, but of course I said “Yes!”  I met up with Bernie and Kerri last Thursday, they are an absolutely ADORABLE couple from Queensland that came to Seattle for a holiday and cruise (gotta use the Aussie terms here!) and then after booking their holiday decided that they wanted to turn it into a honeymoon and so they decided to have a judge perform a wedding ceremony while they were in Seattle.   Kerri had searched for wedding photographer’s online, found me, and booked me (thank you Google!).    It was a great excuse to spend a day in Seattle – I took my friend Jenny (who is also my “nanny” for my kiddos in her spare time) and we headed up to Seattle Thursday morning and had an wonderful afternoon with Bernie and Kerri (Jenny was also a witness for their marriage), and then finished off our evening checking out the sites and eating some yummy Italian food.

Their wedding was very simple – he wore a grey suit, she wore a white dress, and had a simple rose bouquet.   No complications, no busyness, just two people celebrating their love together.   It was the most simple wedding I had ever been too, but yet their apparent love and affection for one another also made it one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever been too.

And the Ceremony:

That statement can take on a whole new meaning when your talking about the Lemmons family.  

Yesterday I had the honor of photographing my brother-in-law, Craig’s, wedding.  My other sister-in-law, Jenica Lemmons (Lemondrops photography) photographed the wedding with me.  I’m so excited to have Nicole join the Lemmons clan.  Crazy as we may be, we love her to death (and we hope she likes us too!!!!).   It’s been so fun to get to be a part of the journey these two have made together and I’m looking forward to many more years of fun times with these two.

As we were driving out to the photo location we happened upon a friend of Craig’s driving this car.   We flagged him down and asked if we could have a few photos with his car.     I have to say it’s the most unique car I’ve ever gotten to photograph!

The lighting was a bit tough to work with here, but I was loving the chiapet license.

The ceremony :

Normally when I turn to get the shot of the groom seeing the bride walk down the aisle I catch a guy in a big awestruck grin gazing at their soon-to-be wife.

Craig did this:

The reception:

My husband wore his redneck tux to the wedding…..I about died when I first saw it, but I love him.  :-)

A few fun ones:

And a few final favorites from the day…..

My brother-in-law got married to his best friend today.   I’m exhausted from a long day of decorating and shooting, but I had to share just one.  Once I’ve had a good night’s sleep I’ll be back to share many more!    I’m so happy to have a new sister.  :-)

So I totally loved the soundtrack for this particular wedding – Beatles songs and covers played for quite a few of the events during the wedding and I haven’t been able to get the songs out of my head since!

Judah and Becca had a seriously BEAUTIFUL wedding.   Everything was so classy and stylish.  The couple was amazing too.  Judah I’ve known….well, forever – we were childhood friends, I guess we were even dedicated together as babies (though I don’t remember that far back).  He’s just one of those genuinely nice people that you can’t help but like.  Becca I just met two weeks ago, and I have to say that I was definately impressed by Judah’s pick for his bride!  She was so sweet to me throughout the whole day and had been to me throughout all of the last minute planning too.   I don’t think I’ve ever had such a laid back and friendly bride.

I had a wonderful time…weddings can often be stressful to photograph, but that was SOOO not the case with this wedding.  Every thing was planned so perfectly ahead of time (their wedding planner Molly Guler did an awesome job there!) and so all of the key events just rolled right along.   It was amazing just getting to be a part of it!

Thank you so much for having me Judah and Becca!  I was honered to get to be a part of your day and I hope you enjoy these photos for years to come!

Saturday I got together with 7 lovely models and 3 other local photographers to do a Trash the Dress session in Kalama.   The shoot went amazing, lasting about 6 hours total.    I got some amazing photos and models totally ROCKED it!  I still haven’t even had a chance to go through everything that I got, but I didn’t want to make the gals wait forever to see a preview so I pulled one real quick for each gal to share on here.   There will be lots more to come later this week!