To celebrate this event, you are invited to our blog-warming party!

Our new location: www.samandmaryphotograpy.com/blog

Date and time: the door’s always open

What to bring: no vases, or picture frames, thank you. Just drop on by and say hello by leaving a comment on our new blog.

For those who are feeling really generous, submit by email to info@samandmaryphotography.com, your must-have favorite piece of furniture (or one you already own) telling us why it’s your favorite, with your name and city/state, and country you are from. We may feature your piece in an upcoming post!

To close off our old blog:

Thank you to our readers for visiting us over the last year. We appreciate your comments, kinds words and page counts, we know you’re out there!

Thank you to our fellow photographers and vendors we’ve met along the way. We feel honoured to be a part of such a creative and professional community. We look forward to working with you more in the future.

And of course, a huge thank you to our clients for your trust in us. You have enriched our lives and we really wouldn’t be here without you guys.

We’re excited to start off on a new year of blogging, with lots more happening! See you on the other side!

lots’a lovin’,
sam and mary.

your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

Thank you for stopping by Sam and Mary Photography’s blog. Here you will find us posting photos of some of our recent wedding and lifestyle work as well as our personal photos.

If you are a prospective wedding client, you can check out more of our wedding and engagement portfolio through our weddings website.

If you or anyone you know is looking for family portraits or a lifestyle session, please visit our lifestyle website for exclusive portfolio.

Please email us at info@samandmaryphotography.com for more information regarding pricing and availability.

Thanks and for the time being, all new posts will be under this one, so please visit again soon. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to get updates anytime we have a new blog post. We’d love to also hear from you, so feel free to leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

All the best in 2008!

your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

For those getting married this year, the Wedding Palace bridal show at the Ottawa Congess Centre was the place to be this past weekend! The place was buzzing with excitement of prospective brides and their friends, vendors, music, fashion shows, food, and all things wedding! It made me want to plan my wedding all over again, well.., almost.

It was, however, a great chance to meet some of the vendors and fellow photographers in this industry and put faces to the names! A couple of our brides this year was even there, so that was a lot of fun! So here is a quick tour for those who missed it.

This is Sue from Weddingbells magazine who personally invited us and gave us tickets to the show. She is super helpful and overall nice person whom we’ve had the privelege of working with. Thanks, Sue!

We met Madeleine of Chapeaux de Madeleine, whose hats caught my eye! These are super stylish for weddings and I’ve always wanted to try one on. She was gracious to suit a few on me. Hmmm, so much to choose from…

Okay, we absolutely love this chandelier from Party Time Rentals.

And there was a whole lot of cake! Here’s one from The Icing on the Cake:

Vietienne from Sentiment wedding cakes had one of the most unique cake designs. They are more like pieces of art as the cakes, designed with architectural elements, resembled towering buildings with intricate work. For the non-traditional bride of course!

We met the talented folks at Starfish who we got along with really well. They are young, fresh and full of creativity. Here is part of the team with their florist, Minoo of Tulipa

Aaron invited us to take photos of their booth, so here are a few shots that Sam was able to capture of the beautiful details.

Here’s one of Sam with Miv from Miv Photography who does amazing work and we are glad to finally meet. We also met Byron Brydges and his wife, Maureen, but too busy chatting to take a photo. Both are great people and we are glad to be a part of this talented group of photographers.

Oh, something I’d love to have for my wedding… doves! Right, so no more wedding for me, but I’d love to shoot a couple releasing these beautiful birds this year! Here, our girls are at their first bridal show… we told them they have 40 years to go till their turn!

Dove by Alain of Les Envoleis Blanches

Well, that’s our scoop on the show this year!

On that note, we want to wish all the best to our brides this year who are planning their wedding, we are honoured to be your photographers and can’t wait for the big day! We love that each bride and couple is unique and has their own style and we’re looking forward to how fun these weddings will be!

If you are a prospective bride and would be interested in booking us as your photographers, we’d love to hear from you and talk more about your wedding! You can visit our website for our portfolio and more information. For pricing and availability, feel free to email us. Hope to connect with some of you soon!

Happy planning!

~love
mary
your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

It’s already 2008 and life is already better in that we have decided, as we have the past few years, to not be bound to make the traditional new year’s resolutions. No pressure, no guilt. Instead, the new year is a good time to remind ourselves of the lifestyle changes that we choose to live by and work on the rest of the year.

There are a few that come to mind, that being:

* keeping a healthy positive attitude always
* making healthy food choices, but still eating foods we love
* being active and outdoors as much as possible
* having a good balance of work and play

On the topic of being active, Sam and I are starting this year off right and are going to be running with Nike+. In case you haven’t heard, and want to join in the fun, the Nike+ experience involves a Nike+ Ipod Sport Kit, a Nike+ shoe, and Apple’s Ipod Nano.

There are tons of reviews on this already, but you can read more on these blogs, here, here, and here to name a few.

Okay, so there are so many great features that attracted me to this, one being that you can track your progress on your computer through your ipod and that is important if you have goals you want to meet. Another, more obvious reason is that it looks fun, so why not?

You just gotta love the branding that Nike and Apple have and now teamed up they have come up with another great idea. We’ll let you know how it goes once we give it a try!

What are your goals or things you want to accomplish this year?

~mary
your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

The gingerbreads are half consumed, and we have been reflecting on all the things we have accomplished this year. It has certainly been a year of growth for us both in our personal lives as well as in our business. We have done so much more than we thought would be possible, met so many great clients, made new friends, tried new things and continue to pursue our passions. We really feel so blessed to have clients that have allowed us to push ourselves creatively in our art. Thank you all who have been a part of our lives this year!

Here’s to more laughter, joy and a colourful New Year in 2008!

lots’a sweet lovin’,
sam and mary
your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

Ironically though it being officially the first day of winter and after already a month of snow and cold, today’s forecast is rainy with temperatures warming up to 7 degrees celsius. Who would’ve thought!

Hope you take time to laugh and play as we enter into the Christmas season and end of 2007!

your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

Apparently, to give you an idea of how important these snow plows are, Ottawa had spent $5 million on the city’s snow removal budget the last weekend alone (with the 37 cm of snow dumped). Two weeks before that, it was $3 million on 25 cm of snow! Click here for the full CBCnews article about it.

So, if you so feel inclined, go thank all those people working hard to get the snow off the roads and make it safer for us to drive! It’s good to be thankful.

Mary
your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

So here’s the scene (as Sam witnessed and was a part of yesterday): Six guys hovering around a gleaming red, 2-stage, 8 hp Toro snowblower after conguering the snow off one another’s driveways. Each with a beer in their hands, as if they were mighty warriors celebrating their victories, admiring this machine like it was a pimped out 1969 Camaro Z28. Ok, so we live in the burbs and that is pretty exciting!

more snow, anyone?

the sexy snowblower that started it all.

beer, snow and more snow… does it get any more canadian than that?

p.s. a big “thank you” to our neighbours for helping to push our car out of the snow yesterday and to Dwayne for helping to dig our driveway out during this storm! you guys all rock!

your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

10 things about me that you probably don’t know:

1. I have all four of my wisdom teeth. I’ll face it, I may have a wide jaw, but they all fit in my mouth comfortably and none of them need to be pulled out. Every dentist I’ve seen have been in awe and always double check their count to make sure those are wisdom teeth! Okay, I have a lot of teeth! So, watch out. The funny thing is, Sam has no wisdom teeth (no, they haven’t been pulled, just never grown in!)

2. I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. I’m not much of a drinker either. I like to be the sober one at parties while watching everyone else get hammered. It’s always more entertaining!

3. On the Myers Briggs personality survey, I place very strong as an introvert. Most of the time I can be extroverted and people who don’t know me, find it surprising that I am an introvert. Sam, on the other hand, is a very strong extrovert, but we are starting to think he may be a closet introvert, after all!

4. I’m not one to win anything, but I once won a jellybean contest at a kids camp at church. Everyone had to guess how many jellybeans were in this huge jar, and the closest guess would win the whole jar at the end of the week. I was a happy kid walking home with all those jellybeans! The only time Sam won anything, was Van Halen concert tickets in highschool.

5. I enjoy cleaning, okay, maybe that’s pushing it, maybe I just really enjoy a clean space. I find a clean and clutter-free space is therapeutic and leaves room for creativity. So, I like to vacuum and see the floors clean. Is that messed up or what?

6. The worst chore for me would be getting the groceries. I don’t like the parking, the carts, the aisles, staring blankly at the shelves and forgetting what you came to get, the line-ups, the loading, unloading from the car and putting away the food once they’re in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I love food. However, I would be so content to never step into a grocery store or supermarket again! Anyone want to swap their floors for groceries?

7. I’ve always wanted naturally curly brown hair! Don’t ask me why. Maybe the grass is always greener on the other side?

8. I love sports and being active. My friend in college got me to try out for the girls’ flag football team with her our first year, and at the first tryout we got our picture taken for the school year book, so I was stuck, and later hooked on it! The irony was, my friend, hurt her foot and had to be on crutches the whole season!

9. Sam thinks I have secret crush on Vin Diesel (ssshhh, but I’m not telling!).

10. And lastly, I never cry at movies. I realized I had this super-power in highschool, when I went to watch “The Joy Luck Club” with my sister, mom and my best friend at the time, and her mom. It was such a sad sad movie, probably the saddest I’ve seen, and the whole theatre was full of bawling mothers and daughters, and I was the only dry-eyed one there. I seriously thought something was wrong with me . Sam honestly believes I cry more for joy than I do for sadness.

Ok, that’s 10!

I’m off to find a few who haven’t been tagged…

your Ottawa Wedding Photographer

Here are two we took with their newly painted wall:

And some outdoors…

Our session ended, but Mia kept wanting to sit there all afternoon playing with the leaves! We had time to just enjoy the perfect afternoon with them afterwards.

M&C: We can only wait and see all the wonderful things that are in store for you guys as a family. Thanks for allowing us to be a small part of your lives!

love,
sam and mary

your Ottawa Wedding Photographer