Wedding
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One month ago today Molly and Nic tied the knot in a beautiful ceremony in Panola Gardens, just north of White Bear Lake. It was a billion degrees during the middle of the heatwave that swept Minnesota back earlier this summer, but Molly kept her cool the entire time — and Nic’s jacket didn’t spend much time on his shoulders.
If I write much more, it will no longer be one-month ago and will instead be one-month-and-one-day … so I’ll be cutting the text short… (lets be honest, no one really cares what I write, do they??) 
Engagement Sessions
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Erin, David and I met at Mickey’s diner in Downtown St. Paul – I’d never been before which is almost sacrilegious given I was born and raised in the Twin Cities and watched more than my share of the Mighty Ducks movies. Had a shake, chatted… it was a diner, just like you’d expect. Yep.
As we walked through downtown to Rice Park, The St. Paul Library, down along Kellogg and back to Mickey’s we ran into a lot of kids all dressed up for prom… but it clearly was not prom season. So we asked (and took a photo). Apparently another Minnesota thing I never knew about is “Finale” — basically it seems like prom, but later in the year and a bit ritzier. Huh.
Anyway, Erin and David were awesome — you can clearly tell he is her superman and he is totally head over heels for her. Good thing, given they are getting married soon…
Plug Bug
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This past weekend I decided to finally get around to taking the first step on my next big project. From growing a 1000 pound pumpkin, to building a client meeting space with my bare hands (complete with taps to serve my homebrew)… I tend to like to grab a new ‘project’ or hobby every year or so. Colleen just calls them my yearly “midlife crisis” as she sighs.
Given we were in Asia this past year during pumpkin planting time, and that I’d already hit my goal weight after only two years, I thought this would be the perfect year to start something new – a bit crazy, fun, useful, etc. Cue me totaling my super-duper lovely and ever-forgiving wife’s first-ever car which she had a very strong emotional attachment to. (RIP, Blue)
Electric car it is! …and what’s one of the hardest things about building an electric car? Making all the ‘powered accessory’ items work — power steering, vacuum assisted brakes, air conditioning, power windows/locks, etc, etc…
Guess what kind of car doesn’t have any of those features? Yep — old-school VW Bugs! Shoot – even the windsheild fluid squirters are powered by the pressure of the spare tire!
Luckily I happen to have always wanted one as well. Additionally, they are super-light, cheap, way-cool, and relatively easy to work on. So, after a month of searching I bought a 1970 model this past Sunday. The whole 1.5 hour drive home I had a grin ear-to-ear — I simply couldn’t wipe it off my face! What a blast!
I’ll probably get to converting it sometime soon (need to learn how first! heh) so for now I’m enjoying simply driving it around and causing all the teenagers to get sore shoulders. The first time I drove past a park and heard a half-dozen screams of “SLUG BUG, NO BACKS!!” I litteraly busted out laughing — brought back so many memories of smacking my brothers/friends on road trips when I was younger. I’m glad I can be the guy that causes those memories to start for others…
Baby
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Colleen has been friends with Seth’s dad Sam for 12 years and can still remember when Sam started dating his now wife, Karen. Sam and Karen are made for each other and the nicest people you will ever meet, so it’s no wonder that baby Seth was so cooperative during his photo shoot! Sam is a firefighter and wanted to incorporate that into the photos which made for some seriously unique images. Karen is a teacher and also a wedding veil-maker extraordinaire! She is the person behind my “Awesome custom veil maker” link that has been in the right-hand column of this blog since its inception. She made two amazing and perfect veils for Colleen for our wedding and we were so happy to be able to offer these special photos of her new little guy. We took these when Seth was one week old – and now this time will be immortalized forever. Congrats to the new Strassburg family!
Photo Station
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Kelly and Justin (whose engagement photographs accompanied my most recent birthday post) booked the photostation for their wedding. A while later she came to me with an idea: What if they gave everyone frames as their wedding favors and we used the photostation on-site printing to ‘fill’ the frames for all the guests – giving them a great memento from the wedding. Brilliant!!
So we did just that this past Saturday at their wedding at the Carlson Center Rotunda in Minnetonka.
We added chalkboards to the mix so guests could ‘leave a message’ and I also enlisted an additional assistant to help with the added volume. I don’t hesitate to say that it was the greatest thing in the history of all human achievement. :)
Engagement Sessions
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Nikki and Ben both live and work in downtown Minneapolis – so naturally it makes sense that they’d plan to get married downtown as well. From that flows a downtown engagement session… all very logical. But then when they said we could go on the roof of a cool building in the middle of the city? That’s a logical step I hadn’t expected…. an awesome logical step. Nikki tells me we might get some post-wedding shots up there in her dress sometime — can’t wait!
In addition to the cool connection they had to the locations, they were also super fun to work with – I’ve gotten a lot of ‘blue steel’ faces in my day, but rarely do I truly feel the power of a full on double-Magnum. Pow… that’ll stop more than a ninja star.
Here are a few teaser shots from their session…
