.:our dreams of a garage studio:.

In addition to the water leaks, we discovered that, according to the management company, the "owner" has "property" in the garage that he doesn't want moved. He wanted it emphasized that everything in the garage is his and needs to stay there. What kind of "property" do you think all of this is? If we get mean-spirited, we may just throw it into the leaking basement. I'm not sure any of it has any worth.So much for our dreams of building a studio in the garage. We've decided the dining room will have to suffice.

.:our series of unfortunate events:.

So if you're wondering where your photos are...

WARNING: Ignore all grammar and typographical errors. I'm sure this post is full of them, but I don't care to proofread and fix them this time. Consider it part of the charm of this text-heavy post.

I am absolutely 100% sure that this will be extremely comical in the near future. Right now... it's only slightly funny.

Here is a timeline of events from the last two weeks of Brian and I's life. I like to to call it, "Mallory & Brian's personal testimony of Murphy's Law"

Monday:

Call internet provider and have them turn off internet at old house and turn on in new house on Thursday as move-in date is set for Wednesday

Tuesday:

Get call from management company of new house stating the owner hasn't cleaned it and it will not be ready until Friday.

Wednesday:

Sit in frustration that you can't be moving when you really need to. Walk to the new house (which is in sight from old home's front porch) and find there are still items from the last renters in the yard that do not appear as if they will be picked up.

Thursday:

Lose internet connection--no photography can be uploaded.

Friday:

First day in new place: discover that the internet doesn't work in new place. Call internet company who says they can get there on Monday. Find the kitchen is absolutely full of some insects that appear to be gnats but are probably fruit flies (yum!) and that there is a water drip under the sink that appears it has been in existence for some time as the board underneath is completely rotten. Make note to self to get fly paper when we return. Get a few minor furniture objects moved and then head out for wedding to shoot in another state.

Saturday:

Shoot said wedding (which was absolutely lovely and lifted our spirits from the past few days' fiascos) then find out when you get to the hotel (in another state) at 10 p.m. that your room was apparently booked for the previous night and there's no hotel rooms open for 50 miles because of several events. Oh well, the pool closed at 10, anyway, and that was the part I was looking forward to the most. Drive an hour and a half to in-law's home and stay there.

Sunday:

Drive back to Missouri to new house and move bed. Have your truck just mysteriously die. Get a chance to look at the house. Find multiple murals that the previous renters left behind that will have to be painted over. Kind of endearing. Explore new basement (the door of which to get to it still has one of those super old keyholes to which we do not have a key--but it looks cool!)

and notice multiple "fixed patches" that surely mean that the foundation and all that is contained within it are structurally sound. Find raccoon tracks. Joy. Several people offer the suggestion of trapping the animal. Then what do you do with it? I personally do not want to meet a wild raccoon face to face--dead or alive. Maybe if we ignore it, it will go away?

Monday:

While waiting for internet company to show up to connect internet so you can help your customers, discover that large quantities of water are streaming through ceiling/window of back room. Spend all day moving buckets of water into the kitchen sink to avoid catastrophe. Find out when said internet man shows up that apparently out of the 6 telephone jacks in the new place, none are actually connected to a phone line. Internet man offers to run line for $85/hour. Call internet company and cancel service and call other internet company and start service--they can't come out until Thursday. Guess no one's getting their photos this week. Try truck again. Get stranded at pharmacy across the street because it breaks down again.

Tuesday:

Management company comes over and tells you that the hole in the back room with the water streaming is the owner's problem because they can't patch the roof anymore. Will have to wait for him. Discover that the garage, where the studio was going to go, has major roof leaks. Will have to come up with new plan.

Wednesday:

Move most large furniture items with help of family and their truck. Tow non-operating truck to repair shop in hopes they can figure out what went wrong. Discover that with previous foundation work done the stairs are now too narrow for washer and dryer to get to basement where the hookups are. Have to remove part of the wall to get them down there. Surprisingly find that the last tenants didn't correctly hook up their washer with the pipes, which probably caused a lot of the flooding that is apparent in the basement. Inspect the non-working koi pond in the backyard which now seems to not only be filled with water from the rain, but also contain several other foreign objects that I am positive do not belong in a koi pond.

Thursday:

Have internet hooked up only to have it go down ten minutes later as they are "working on the lines" to upgrade everyone's internet. Perfect timing. Get a call from management company letting you know that they have scheduled your check-out date on Monday the 22nd rather than Tuesday the 30th and did not inform you prior to the call. Will somehow have to move everything without the truck (still at the shop) and clean other house by Monday at 9 a.m. all the while shooting a wedding and rehearsal an hour away.

Friday:

Wake up to discover that there is now green mold and water damage on the ceiling of said back room. In addition, there are three claw-like black stringy things growing out of window frame below hole in the wall that look like a spawn of Satan is trying to rip into the house. [It looked more menacing in real life when you walked into the room.] Call to management company that we are not inhabiting this place until this is fixed.

[UPDATE: The management company came immediately on Friday after we called them in hysterics and did find the leak, patch it, then got rid of "Satan's claw," which apparently was a fungus. The head maintenance fellow they sent out reiterated that the mold was not harmful and, to prove his point, wiped some off of the ceiling in front of Brian and licked his hand. Needless to say, we feel better now that there is no longer a fungus claw staring at us every time we enter the back room. In addition, I also figured out that the raccoon probably got in the basement when the management company left the door from the garage to the basement open the day before we moved in as it was open when we got there. The raccoon apparently was just curious. I think he's just confined to the garage. Whew!]

.:katie and mitch:.

I'm saving the good stories about Katie and Mitch for their wedding post (next month! woo hoo!). But I will say that Ms. Katie Burkle is so dear to me. We went through discipleship together for two years (was it really two years?) with several other lovely ladies. And now she's getting married to the man of her dreams. It's funny, as you look through these photos you'll see that I unconsciously worked on balancing out Katie and Mitch's 12 inch height disparity (Brian and I have the same height difference, which is probably why I told him he was too tall for me all the time!).

.:i should be getting ready for work:.

From our shoot with Lauren & Justin (there will be more, I promise!). This photo somehow encompasses how I want to remember the rest of my life.

.:rob & becca preview:.

I plan on another post on these two later but I was editing photos tonight and happened to be on the posed ones, (which are generally my least favorite to edit as I fancy myself more of a photojournalistic photographer than a traditional one who poses) but I was pleasantly surprised and delighted as I went through these. Rob and Becca made incredible models and as such I had to immediately post some of them. I think it's quite clear from these pictures that Rob and Becca were absolutely delighted that they finally tied the knot. Notice a pattern of gigantic grins and laughter?

That's how it should be. = )

And a gorgeous, elegant one of Becca by herself to end the post on a sweet note. I cannot tell you how stunning she looked.

.:allison and alan:.

I need to preface this blog with two points.

1. It's stinkin' hard to make pick out the best photos of a wedding to stick up on your blog. That's why it took me so long to put these up. (Allison & Alan were married in the middle of April!)
   
2. I always try to make friends with the flowergirls at weddings. I love shooting little kids in action and it's awkward if I shoot all of the kids there (especially if the bride and groom end up with 50 shots of a really cute kid from their reception who was the child of someone's date they'd never met before...). To avoid the previous mishap I concentrate on the flowergirl to photograph as I always know I have full permission to shoot at least her. You'll find a lot of photos of her to follow. What can I say, the girl was not only beautiful but loved to smile at me (or, perhaps the camera, but I'd like to say me!).

K. So I met Allison officially when she was in a production of Godspell multiple years ago that I was designing costumes for. She was fun to be around and had a great sense of style (oh how I wish I could dress myself with her pizzaz). I liked her. That's pretty much it. I had several moments of "Wow I wish she was going to Mizzou and not to that school that shall not be named in Springfield so that we could be friends." But, alas, that's where she was, and that's where she stayed. There she met Alan.

• Confession #1: Can I admit that I cried at their wedding? There's nothing more touching at a wedding than seeing the groom tear up when he sees his bride for the first time. I can't remember which part of the ceremony it was (maybe it was most of it... who knows since it always goes by so fast!) but I had to pause and put the camera down for almost a full minute as I worked to compose myself and continue shooting. It was absolutely crystal clear watching Allison and Alan together that day and during our engagement session that they love each other with an enduring love that will weather anything that comes their way.


• Confession #2: I cried again at the reception. Yup, again. It was when Allison was giving her toast to Alan at the reception and her words sounded nearly identical to the vows I gave Brian on our wedding day. It went something like this, "I promise to always love you no matter what, but I can't promise I'll always be nice to you and for that I am sorry."

Maybe the reason I cried so much with Allison and Alan is that they remind me so much of Brian and I. Their marriage has a purpose and a calling. In our nearly two years of marriage Brian has yet to raise his voice with me or get angry at me. Yet I can't count the times I have been frustrated or yelled at him for some dumb reason. Through my short temper tantrums (don't worry, I haven't had one for several months!) Brian is always calm and kind and gentle, even as I act like a brat. My "fits" don't last very long as I finally look over at Brian and see in his eyes how deeply he loves me and how much my anger hurts him--if you saw him you couldn't help it, your heart just melts.

Although I highly doubt Allison is subject to temper tantrums like me! So don't get any bad ideas about her!

Another story. (Now I'm rambling.) This one shows that Allison really is a better woman than I. During Alan's toast he mentioned how it blessed him so much that though when he met Allison she had next to no interest in baseball, let alone Alan's beloved St. Louis Cardinals, she worked hard to become a fan of them and even took up reading the baseball stats from the paper to talk about them with people (although Alan claims she didn't know what half of the stats actually meant but he loved that she was trying!). Alan says that shows what an amazing woman she was and how it meant so much to him that she was trying to take an interest in what was important to him. This part of his toast reminded me of a fateful night when Brian and I were sharing a meal at Country Kitchen after one of our pre-marital counseling sessions. We had a list of a few "homework questions" to discuss. One of which was, "If I could do anything different to bless you, what would it be?" I asked the question of Brian, expecting his reply to be, "Absolutely nothing, you're perfect just as you are," which was his usual response to everything. (Told you he was amazing!) That night, however, his response went something like this, "Mallory, I've been thinking a lot about that question and I don't want you to feel hurt by this in any way whatsoever. You know that I love sports--I follow them all on ESPN.com: golf, tennis, hockey, basketball, football--you name it I follow it. But to be honest I would like to watch at least one on TV from time to time. The problem is that I don't want to be one of those husbands that watch games without his wife while she scurries around the house doing things. I love you and I want you to be by my side always. Even when I'm watching a sport. So, Mallory, what would really bless me is if you picked one of those sports to take interest in and watch it with me from time to time." My response? I cried. Isn't it amazing he still loved me enough to marry me? Boy am I blessed.


So enough rambling. Here are a few of my favorites from the Hughes' wedding, FINALLY. (And check out Alan's groom's cake!)

.:justin & elaine:.

So you know those times when you meet people and you just know that they're going to be uber interesting? The type of people you wish you were friends with in part just to say you had friends that were *that* cool. That's Justin and Elaine.

Justin went to MSA (a nerd camp where Brian and I met oh so many years ago) and continues to teach the geeks there in the summers. He plays who knows how many instruments and is some big head honcho in the True/False Film festival here in CoMo. Not to mention his bride-to-be, Elaine, has to be one of the most beautiful, kindest people ever. When I asked Justin over the phone what kind of people to look out for when we were meeting them for the first time he said, "I have a beard and Elaine is very pretty." I think he summed them up perfectly. Elaine paints beautiful artwork (you can see one of her quick pieces over the mantle in a latter photo that she painted that morning) but has gone back to school to get a more "useful" degree in nursing (albeit a degree that makes me a little more squeamish) so she can work in the burn unit. They met when they were both dating other people but after their subtle flirting over the Lakota counter where Justin was working, eventually they figured out there was something more.

It's so fun to spend time with other "creatives" so when Justin mentioned to Brian some rumblings about a pie fight for their engagement photos I knew we probably wouldn't be doing traditional shots. And, sure enough, Sunday night we all had a blast creating all kinds of different non-traditional engagement shots and working to capture this absolutely fun and simple couple.

Here we are. Justin and Elaine. No one can accuse these of being traditional (okay except for one or two of them... but other than those).

(There is an entire sequence of photos for the pie fight. I'll post a link at a later date.)