I known Olya now for about 9 years and Brian for about 4 years, and over that time they have made each other very happy. That happines continues this weekend with their wedding. As a favor, they asked us to Video their wedding, but being the photographers that we are, we also took a lot of pictures… You can find those here. The ceremony was beautiful and the reception was a lot of fun. We got to spend time with some other friends that we have not seen in a long time now. Overall, fun was had by all.

On the more technical side, Cindy and I found that we were having trouble getting good lighting in the low light situations. This is something that we know that we have problems with, but we were not able to over come them. It is a good thing that we were not the hire photographer, else I would have felt bad about missing some images, but doing this for fun gave us a chance to work on our skills. I am sure that you will see more than a few good pictures that we took that we were very happy with. Who knows, maybe one day, we will be the ones that people hire to photograph their wedding, till then we just need to get better…

On the way home, we decided to swing by Virginia Beach, since we were so close. We took some good pictures. Look for those here. We only posted a few pictures from this, but we were running with a low batter and our hard drive batter was dead, so we thought that we needed to conserve memory to take pictures of the leaves on the way home, but we did not find any good pictures of that…

-Matt

This will be a little short, but we have pictures posted from our honeymoon. I am going to be working on a more detailed writeup of some of the more interesting stories from our trip, but in the mean time, take a look at some of the pictures. Of course, we took about 1500 pictures while we were gone, but I managed to bring that down to a sample of just 160 pictures to highlight a lot of the things that we saw… Let me know what you think…

Pictures are here

-Matt and Cindy

So, the wait is over, we have pictures from the wedding. First of all, the pictures taken by the photographer can be found here. The two photographers are almost as much of a shutterbug as Cindy and I are. They posted almost 500 pictures, but we are sure that they took closer to 2000 pictures and just picked out the best ones, much like we do…

Secondly, we have some pictures that other people have shared with us. Those can be found here. If you have pictures that you would like to add to this section, please let me know and I will give you information about how to get them added…

Finally, there will be some of the pictures that Cindy and I took, but we have soo much from the days leading up to the wedding and then the honeymoon that it is just going to take us so long to get through them, but look for them… We also have soo many stories to tell about our honeymoon, so look for those to be added soon too….

-Matt and Cindy

This weekend Christine threw a suprise bridal shower for me (little did she know that I had already heard rumors of it before). After a long day of being escorted arolund by Matt’s mom to various quilting shows and stores. After traveling around all day, Matt’s mother took me to Christine’s house where people from both sides of the family were there to celbrate with me.

… Details to be added…

Pictures have been upload by Liz, and soon other pictures will get added to. Look here

<3 Cindy

Rosie (maid of honor) hosted a Girl’s Only party on August 6th. This could also be named the usual “Bachelorette Party” - a last hoorah for the ’single’ bride-to-be. Several people met for lunch at Chateau Morisette, a local winery in Floyd, Va. Rosie had a glass of water spilled on her, but other than that our lunch was delightful. We went on a winery tour which included the $4 wine tasting event afterwards. Several attendees chose to purchase wine, sauces, and gifts in the gift shop before departing.

Returning to Rosie’s place, a friend of mine from work Veronica and her friend Anita were waiting to set up a “Beauty Control” party to pamper us! They started with a warm, peppermint foot soak so that none of us could get up to get food, drinks, or even cameras They added a warm lavendar neck pack which made all of us feel very very nice! On one hand, Anita applied a series of facial cleansers and moisturizers. The other hand used another series of the same called “microderm abrasion”. We removed our feet from the foot soak and tried two separate series of foot scrubs and lotions, one named “Margarita” for its distinct Margarita-like smell.

After the pampering was over, presents were opened… Some appear in the pictures, others - well, let’s just say no one outside of the attendees and eventually Matt will know about! I also took pictures with our um, Peter cake. Yumm!

Let the games begin! Rosie worked hard planning many fun, interesting, and unique games complete with prizes.

After the games, Rosie, Christine, Geetha, Mana, and I went downtown to visit Steppin Out which is a gathering of local merchants in the downtown plaza of Blacksburg. I found my “something blue” toe ring! We grabbed a bite to eat at Sharkey’s where ADonna sat, enjoying the company of fellow ATK people.

The whole day & night was quite fun; Thank you Rosie & Thank You everyone who took part! A link to pictures I have so far (send them to me if you have more!) here.