Archive for the ‘Lexigraphics Photography’ Category

The Couple:  Usha Mishra and Shannon John Clark

Wedding Date:  November 26, 2011

Photography by Lexigraphics Photography

Tell us a little about you and your beloved:  Like many couples today, we met on an online dating site and realized that we had a handful of mutual friends. Shortly after “meeting” online and exchanging a few emails, we met for our first date over coffee, and tried to figure out if we had met before given that we had friends in common. We had such a great conversation (we were both smiling the entire time over coffee) and before we parted ways, we made plans for a second date the following week.

When we met, we both had very flexible schedules, so it was a lot of fun getting to know each other while doing everyday things like running errands, going for long walks in the various neighborhoods of San Francisco, cooking meals together, and hanging out with each others friends. We soon became inseparable and quickly became each others best friend, and never did figure out whether we had met previously!

What was the most amazing part of your day?  Seeing all of our family and friends gathered in one place to celebrate us was elating.

What else would you like to share about your big day?  We carefully weighed the pros and cons about getting married over Thanksgiving weekend. We decided to go for it, since Thanksgiving is one of our most favorite holidays – we love gathering with family and friends, sharing a meal together, and being reflective of what we’re thankful for. To be able to celebrate our anniversary during that particular time of year will help us develop our own combined family tradition.

The long weekend also helped us extend the time we got to spend with our guests who came in from out-of-town. We modified the Indian tradition of having a Mehndi party (where the bride and her close female friends have decorative henna applied on their hands) and invited our out-of-town guests and some close friends for dinner at a restaurant the night before the wedding, and had a brunch on the morning after the wedding for relatives. Because many people were spending one or two nights at the hotel near the wedding, we made welcome bags with a few items inside, and a 2-page guide to things to do in San Francisco.

We also created our own ceremony, combining our multicultural traditions and writing our own vows. Family is extremely important to us, so we each had both of our parents walk us down the aisle, had our barely-walking nephew as our ring-bearer (escorted by his dad, brother of the bride) and our 2-year-old niece was our flower girl. Bridesmaids were sisters of the bride, and our rings were designed and handmade by the groom’s sister.

Ceremony Site & Reception Venue:  Bently Reserve

Photographer:  Lexigraphics Photography

Videographer:  Legacy Films

Day of Event Coordinator:  Rolando Mafnas

Caterer:  Betty Zlatchin Catering. In addition to their amazing food, they helped us with all of the lighting, draping, flowers and table settings for our day.

Cake:  Beaux Gateaux

Flowers:  Hunt Littlefield

Favors:  Boxes and tags were handmade by the bride, inserts by C.J. Olson Cherries.

Wedding Dress:  Sari Palace

Bridesmaid Dresses:  Sagar Exclusive

Hair:  Donnelle Malnik

Makeup:  Sheila Patel

Invitations:  eInvite with calligraphy by friend of the bride and groom

Ceremony & Cocktail Reception Entertainment:  String trio from San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Dinner & Dancing DJ:  DJ Jeremy Productions

Honeymoon location:  Las Vegas, South Beach Miami, Caribbean (Seabourn Cruise)

Any other of your wedding vendor(s) you’d like to call out?  Mehndi (henna) by Neeta Sharma. Indian sweets by Amber India. Rings from Hannah Clark Jewelry.

First Dance Song:  ”Happy Together” the Mel Torme Version

Any advice you’d give to our readers who are planning their weddings right now?  A few tidbits of advice:

It doesn’t matter how long your engagement is, you will have a flurry of activity as the wedding approaches. I (the bride) wanted to have a longer engagement to work on all the details, but he (the groom) kept saying that there’s no point in drawing out the stress and frenzy. Wow – he was right! It all fell into place and we had a perfect wedding, and only a 5-month engagement.

After you announce your engagement, everyone will offer to help. If it seems overwhelming, accept gracefully by saying, “Thank you! I can’t think of anything I need help with right now, but I know I’ll probably need some help in a couple of months. Can I reach out to you for some help then?” And make sure you keep track of people who offered to help! You can go back to your list (we kept it in a spreadsheet) when you need something specific, just be sure to give your friends plenty of notice for what you need. And don’t forget to write a thank you note!

Figure out which elements of your wedding are the most important to you. Yes, you want everything to be perfect, but what really matters? For us, we love to cook and wanted our wedding to feel like the ultimate dinner party that we would never be able to pull off by ourselves. So, we found an excellent caterer who was aligned with our style of food and made sure we found a venue that would accept outside catering. We also wanted a warm, festive feeling with personal touches that our guests would remember, so we hand-made our favors, left a note on each table explaining why they were seated at that particular table name (we used names instead of numbers), and I also made our escort cards and the ring pillow.

Anything that you would have done differently if you were given the chance?  I would have practiced moving and walking around a while in my wedding dress before my wedding day. I had never tried dancing in anything like that before my wedding!

Blog post by Real Weddings Magazine’s Social Media Maven, Aimee Carroll.

Photos courtesy of and copyright Lexigraphics Photography.

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The Couple:  Alisha and Sean Werner

Wedding Date:  August 20, 2011

Photography by Lexigraphics Photography

Tell us a little about you and your beloved:  Sean and I met through my sister, Amanda — they were friends in college. Amanda asked her friends not to flirt with me during the times I came to visit, needless to say Sean never really listened to her. After a couple of years, I started at the same college and we started a friendship of our own — it quickly blossomed into something more.

What was the most amazing part of your day?  Finally being able to call each other husband and wife! To exchange the vows that we wrote together is one of my more powerful memories from the day. Exchanging promises of unconditional love and to spend of our lives together in front of our loved ones was such a magical moment.

What else would you like to share about your big day?  All of the vendors that we used were so wonderful and helpful. It really pays off to work with people who were so sweet and excited to help you achieve your vision.

Ceremony Site & Reception Venue & Caterer:  Fairyland Club

Photographer:  Lexigraphics Photography

Videographer:  Tim Cofield Weddings

Wedding Planner:  Melissa Hill

Cake:  Couture Cakes and Confections

Flowers:  Melissa’s Garden

Favors:  Mini chocolate chip biscotti from Rembrandt’s Cafe

Wedding Dress:  Bridals by Lori

Bridesmaid Dresses:  House of Brides

Hair & Makeup:  Hannah Nichols of New Identities Salon

Invitations:  Minted

DJ/Entertainment/Band:  Adonia Strings

Honeymoon location:  Antigua

Any advice you’d give to our readers who are planning their weddings right now?  Try and take care of the small details and little decisions, because waiting until two weeks before the big day will make make them harder and larger. Also there is always something that will go a little wrong the day of, just remember it doesn’t matter and no one will notice that it’s missing…just soak in all of the joy and love!

Anything that you would have done differently if you were given the chance?  Nope, nothing! Like I said before, everyone I worked with was out of this world — I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out. I married my best friend…that’s all I wanted anyway.

Photos courtesy of Lexigraphics Photography.

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Another Featured Real Wedding from the Summer/Fall 2012 issue of Real Weddings Magazine loaded to the Real Weddings Magazine Web site…presenting Featured Real Wedding Couple Erika Mae & Phillip Arthur.

Congratulations to Featured Real Wedding Couple Erika Mae & Phillip Arthur who were married on July 29, 2011 at Jacuzzi Family Vineyards.

Click here to read their story, see their slideshow of photos from Lexigraphics Photography, meet their entire wedding dream team and more!

Blog post by Real Weddings Magazine’s Editor/Publisher Wendy Sipple.

Photos courtesy of Lexigraphic Photography.

Check out the Real Weddings Contest Page! Great bridal loot for real Sacramento-area brides!

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The Couple:  Jennifer and Christopher Tredennick

Wedding Date:  October 29, 2011

Photography by Lexigraphics Photography

Tell us a little about you and your beloved:  Christopher is a computer engineer working for Hewlett Packard and I (Jennifer) am a freelance court reporter. We dated for a year and a half before we got engaged, and we are proud to say we planned our wedding in five months.

The story about how we met is pretty fun. Jennifer’s younger sister, Heather White, went to University of the Pacific in Stockton with Christopher. Heather had become friends with several people in Christopher’s fraternity at UOP and eventually befriended Christopher as well. Heather went to visit Christopher at his home in Santa Clara one weekend while she was driving through town where he treated her to – apparently – an absolutely memorable dinner where he prepared cheese meatballs. Heather visited her sister Jennifer a week later and reported with enthusiasm, “Jennifer, I have someone I really would like to introduce you to. He makes amazing meatballs.” Eventually, an introduction was arranged with a gathering of mutual friends, and Christopher and Jennifer were attached from that moment forward. Heather’s inclination was spot-on while trusting her match-making intuition.

What was the most amazing part of your day?  Well, of course, it was spectacular to get to marry a man that I admire, love and respect so much. But one of my favorite and most memorable parts of the wedding was when it came time to feed cake to each other. My husband cut a bite out of the slice we had cut together, and looked at me, and without hesitation, gulped down the piece of cake without a second thought. Christopher is a huge cake enthusiast and actually picked out the flavors for the wedding cake, so it was completely appropriate that he would get so caught up in his enthusiasm about eating cake that he’d forget to feed it to his bride first. When discussed later, Chris exclaimed, “You practice every other part of the wedding, but we never practiced feeding cake to each other. We hardly even talked about it. You can’t really blame me, right?”

What else would you like to share about your big day?  Our mantra for planning our wedding and wedding day was the following:  We have two goals for this wedding: We want to get married and have a really fun party.

We abandoned the goals of perfection for our day and encouraged everyone in our family and bridal party to abandon it also. As long as we ended up married at the end of the day amongst all those we love and adore, that’s all we could hope for. I am so grateful we adopted this attitude and would give every bride and groom the same advice.

Remember that the day is about celebrating the commitment and vows you’re making public, it’s not about the pomp and circumstance, and it will not be perfect. We put our faith and trust into great vendors and a wonderful venue; we delegated our wishes out to friends and family; and our wedding came together so wonderfully and we had SUCH A BLAST! Hold on loosely to the details and perfections, what is important at the end of the day is that you’re married to the love of your life.

I was also so humbled by all the amazing people who were eager to offer up their talents and gifts to help us with our amazing wedding. My mom, Charlene White, and “second mom” Heidi Leveroni spent hours planning and putting together a beautiful candy buffet as a gift to us; two women who have been doing my hair since I was a young girl insisted on offering up their skills for my special day and helped make me and all my loved ones look stunning. A long-time family friend — who works for Renfro’s bridal shop in Placerville and has been doing alterations on all my special-occasion dresses since my eighth grade graduation — did an absolutely spectacular bustling alteration and dress alteration to help me feel beautiful on my perfect day. Christopher’s parents threw an absolutely generous and amazing Texas-style rehearsal dinner for all the bridal and extended families, which ended up being about 100 people in total. The groomsmen and bridesmaids were so supportive and loving, they were drama-free and couldn’t have been more helpful. We are so grateful and humbled about how much love was showered on us, and we are so grateful for everyone’s contributions.

Ceremony & Reception Site, & Caterer:  Lake Natoma Inn. We selected the Lake Natoma Inn in Old Folsom. It was so convenient and we were very happy with our choice. We had about 2/3 of our guests coming from out of town or out of state, so we chose a location where no one would have to drive anywhere for anything. They could stay at the hotel and walk to anything we needed. Old Folsom had a lot of fun fall activities going on during the weekend, and the ambiance of the town, restaurants and shopping was great for everyone. It was so convenient, and no one had to worry about driving anywhere if they didn’t want to. The staff at Lake Natoma Inn were great, and we can’t say enough about how easy they made everything and how reasonably priced they were.

Photographer:  Lexigraphics Photography. We loved working with them. A dear friend of ours recommended them to us, and it was a great recommendation. The fact that they’re a husband-and-wife team made it so easy to work with them because they could divide up on the day of the wedding and work with the groomsmen and bridesmaids. You hardly noticed they were there unless you wanted to talk to them. They were so sweet and supportive, I can’t say enough about them.

Cake:  Cakes by Angie. Our cake was made by Angie Cain, and we got raving reviews about how it was the best cake that people had had at a wedding. It was very moist and so yummy. Our flavors were chocolate chip cake with peanut butter butter cream filling, and white cake with Oreo butter cream filling.

Flowers:  Camino Flower Shop. Dottie was so fun to work with, and you can really see her enthusiasm and artistic abilities shine through her beautiful flower arrangements. I would highly recommend her.

Favors:  I dipped Oreos in chocolate as party favors for my guests. This was a surprisingly uncomplicated process and I really had a lot of fun doing it. It was a very inexpensive way to send party favors with our guests, and it was nice that it had a personal touch to it. We also had a candy bar.

Wedding Dress:  Renfro’s Bridal. All the dresses were so reasonably priced compared to all the other dress shops we’d gone to, and the service was so much better. I did all of my other shopping in Bay Area bridal shops, and the service I got at Renfro’s was so much more genuine and enjoyable.

Bridesmaid Dresses:  David’s Bridal

Hair:  My dear family friends, Lynda Frandsen and Eileen Skates-Gervasi, who are very gifted and talented hair stylists who did a magnificent job on my hair.

Makeup:  My gifted and talented, Whitney Egbert, (we’ve been friends since kindergarten) flew all the way from New York to help me with my makeup, and I had NO CLUE she was coming until I was getting my hair done on my wedding day. I was facing a wall while Lynda was doing my hair and all of a sudden I felt a pair of arms wrap around me and turned around to find my friend had flown in from New York for 48 hours to be at my wedding, and my husband was the only other person that knew about it. It was one of the most amazing surprises that day.

Invitations:  DIY from Vistaprint

DJ/Entertainment/Band:  Function 45. I cannot say enough about our experience with our DJ Steve Schon. We had more people comment on our DJ and how amazing he was than about almost any other part of our wedding. His selections in music were great, and he really took a decent amount of time to get to know Chris and me before our wedding, and he played a huge role in getting the guests up and grooving. He helped make it so much fun, and we are so grateful for what he did for us. Our first dance was literally magical with the creative touch he adds. He had Chris and me record audio messages about our feelings about each other, and then fused the messages throughout the song we chose for our first dance, I was in tears because they were some of the most tender words I’ve ever heard Chris say to me was during that recording. Steve was absolutely professional, and I am happily recommending him out anywhere and everywhere I can. He was worth every penny!

Honeymoon location:  Chris actually planned the whole honeymoon, and we spent a week on an island in Belize. Chris told me what to pack and how long to pack for, and I didn’t find out where our final destination was until we landed in Atlanta for our connecting flight to Belize. We stayed at an all-inclusive island in a thatch hut over the warm water, and we had a spectacular time. We got to snorkel four times, we went on a really fun river cruise, we toured the Mayan ruins, and the food and staff was amazing! The price was extremely reasonable as well.

First Dance Song:  ”When You Got A Good Thing” by Lady Antebellum

Anything that you would have done differently if you were given the chance?  We wish we would have had one more hour to dance. We tried to save money by having everything go from 5:30 – 10:00, and Chris and I hardly got to dance at all because we were talking with our guests so much.

Photos courtesy of Lexigraphics Photography.

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The Couple:  Brooke and Kevin Harrington

Wedding Date:  November 4, 2011

Photography by Lexigraphics Photography

Tell us a little about you and your beloved:  Kevin is a Preacher and I am a 4th grade teacher. We met in college, but lived 10 minutes apart most of our childhood lives without knowing each other.

What was the most amazing part of your day?  Getting married, of course! And the food!

What else would you like to share about your big day?  I wish more than anything that my mom could have been there at my special day. She passed away a year and a half prior to my wedding due to an aggressive form of breast cancer. I knew she was watching from heaven. I could not have pulled this wedding day off without my Aunt Caroline. She did my hair, did all of the reception centerpieces and decorated the entire venue!

Ceremony Site & Reception Venue & Caterer:  Cinnabar Hills Golf Course

Photographer & Photo Booth:  Lexigraphics Photography

Videographer:  David Wineinger (My sister’s father-in-law)

Wedding Planner:  ME! And of course some of my bridesmaids, and sister… If my mom had been here, I would have passed on all the planning to her! It was her dream to plan for me… and I would have let her have at it!

Cake:  Cake Expressions made by Cero. Chocolate all the way! And a “Dodgers” groom’s cake for Kevin made by my grandmother, Beverly Wilson: carrot cake.

Flowers:  Courtney Marie Floral. We used many succulents such as hens and chicks; My Aunt Caroline made every centerpiece with flowers provided by Courtney Marie.

Favors:  See’s Candy wrapped individually in gold boxes at each place setting.

Wedding Dress:  Trudy’s Bridal

Bridesmaid Dresses:  Alfred Angelo

Hair:  My Aunt Caroline (a hair stylist in Edmond, OK)

Makeup:  My sister and me (Thanks to Clinique)

Invitations:  DIY

DJ/Entertainment/Band:  I created CDs of Kevin and my all time favorite music to play during the reception…a mix of a little of everything.

Honeymoon location:  Half Moon Bay and San Francisco

Any advice you’d give to our readers who are planning their weddings right now?  Start early…be patient…and be grateful for any help offered.

Anything that you would have done differently if you were given the chance?  Purchased different bridesmaid dresses… it was COLD, but sunny.

Photos courtesy of Lexigraphics Photography.

Check out the Real Weddings Contest Page! Great bridal loot for real Sacramento-area brides!

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