La Boda: Wedding Fotos & A Word On Our Photographer

Once our marriage was, you know, official and all, we were ready to party like rock stars. We walked out of the church breathing the biggest sigh of relief ever. At some point, walking back down the long aisle I managed to lose my husband. If I remember correctly, I think he got pulled aside by someone asking him for money!

Can you see the sense of relief on my face? Either that, or I'm calling out for my lost husband.

The hubs and I scooted out of the church to a nearby spot for a quick photo op. I think I've mentioned this in some really old blog posts, but Mr. Tortolito and I met at USC. In a sort of engineering boot-camp (Nerd Alert!). We met, fell in love, and graduated from USC together, so it holds a pretty special place in our hearts. With the campus being a whole 5 minutes away from our church, it was only natural for us to take wedding pictures there. We have a bunch of favorite pictures. Here are a few.

Tommy Trojan: totally cheesy, but we had to do it!

By the way- I may or may not have mentioned this before. In case I didn't, our photographer was awesome! Look, we had our priorities in terms of wedding budget. We splurged on a couple items: food and entertainment. Those were important to us and we know they are important to guests. Photography was a little lower on the list for us. I know, I know, everyone says that pictures are all you will have left of the wedding once it's all over. I guess that's true to a certain extent. The way I see it, I'll never forget the emotion and joy that we felt on our wedding day. I'll always have that. But anyway, we couldn't spend thousands of dollars on wedding photography. We steered away from the big name photographers, or really any photographer who was already in the business for several years. We were willing to go the student photographer/beginner route. We did lots of research, sent out emails, found some prospects...the whole deal. Through this search, we got in touch with Phoebe. She had only shot a couple of weddings or so when we met her and she was looking to get more experience. Perfect! Turns out we really enjoyed meeting her and had a good feeling that she would do a good job capturing our wedding.

In the end, she totally delivered. Phoebe and her second shooter, Kelly, were the sweetest people. They were organized, on time, creative, fun, friendly, and just so easy to work with. They were what I like to call part of our "wedding team." Our wedding would not have been what it was without our wedding team: photographers, day-of-coordinator, caterer, band. They helped to make our wedding day stress free and relaxed. I honestly think we lucked out in this department.

I guess this is just my way of saying that you don't always have to go the professional route. Photographers gotta start somewhere. We had a feeling that Phoebe would do a great job shooting our wedding, so we went with our gut. And she certainly did not disappoint.

{All fotos by the fabulous Phoebe Joy}