over the pond | UK Destination Wedding Photographer

August 5, 2008

So, life has been crazy busy as I prepare to leave for England for Beth and Dave’s wedding near Manchester, England. I just realized yesterday that I am leaving on MONDAY which equals way less than a week to prepare. I still need to find UK adapters for my electric gadgetry. And I’ve been accumulating rush fees galore as I order last minute batches of prints from my lab to fulfill the last print orders.

note: Print orders received from this point through August 25 will experience at least a two week delay in processing. (Don’t let that stop you from ordering though!!! Your print orders keep us in business.)

Scheduling things has been absolutely insane. I’m glad so many people want to do shoots, but when I look at my calendar for the next two months and have every single week planned out for me, I get just a little bit sad. When I first started working out of my home office, I imagined that I would have blissful and carefree afternoons eating ice cream in-between international wedding travels. Instead… lately it seems like all I have been doing is scurrying to photo shoots trying to make it to the post office, and spending copious amounts of time attached to my macbook pro. Where’s my ice cream?

I went to the post office to finally get a PO box (P.O. Box? po box? PO BOX?) today, and it was quite the ordeal. You need two forms of photo id, proof of residency, and I am convinced my Post Office Worker Nemesis created a rule about needing government-issued EIN documentation (which I don’t have because it is not required documentation for a sole proprietor) to prove your business. My POWN (I just found out his name is Jim) certainly likes his rules and regulations.

Who is going to be the first to send something lovely to my new box?

PO box 200567
Boston MA 02120-1677

(outtake from a session with two year old twin boys from last summer)

In the meantime, as I clean up all the post-its all over my desk, I wanted to leave you with some delightful discoveries I have made in the last few weeks.

• Elizabeth Park in West Hartford CT. Nate and Marilee (whose Newport Rhode Island wedding I photographed almost exactly two years ago) took me there for their complimentary baby session. (They’re the ones who chose the name Natalie for their daughter because it is a combination of their names… and if they went with a family name would have ended up with something like ‘Laetitia.’) Anyway, Elizabeth Park is the most wonderful, maintained and FREE public park I have ever seen. It’s huge and clean and has rose gardens and beautiful little woods… and I actually LIKED the gazebo there because it was covered in ivy and landscaped in with these beautiful flowering hedges. (I have developed this aversion to gazebos… from seeing too many bad wedding venues through the years.) If you’re looking for a place for photos in mid-Connecticut, or just someplace to hang out with your family — this is a great option!
• Bangs. This is random but I had a boudoir session with a woman the other day, and both she and my boudoir stylist were rocking the funky bangs. And my recent meeting with Cambridge illustrator Julia convinced me that I might be up for updating my look sometime soon. Can I pull it off in a slightly punk rock manner?
• Lasermonks.com. Real Savings, Real Monks. Supporting Real People. You guys know you can purchase your printer cartridges from monks, right? I love them! I used to occasionally order our office supplies from my MIT desk job through them and felt real subversive for avoiding the usual Office Depot generic supply order. And I just placed my most recent toner cartridge order this morning. The hilarious add-on gift items when you’re ready to check out completes the experience. Holy Hot Chocolate, here I come!
• Singer-songwriter Amy Lou Hettinger. I heard Amy Lou sing at a recent coffeehouse kind of thing and I love her sound and charming Kentucky personality. She’s a Kentucky transplant who wrote this great song (not currently available on myspace) called love song to the people in the city when she was living in cambridge that I want to use as background music for slideshows. She rocks. Amy is also available to sing at your wedding! Except she just infomed me that she is moving to Alaska (amyhettinger@gmail.com)

Posted in travel schedule