I’d say he did a really good job! I had just done an engagement shoot at the VMFA right before we took them and I love that place! So I decided I wanted to take my headshots there because it provided a pretty but neutral background…The other hard part was choosing an outfit! I thought a fairly neutral colored outfit would compliment my site without being too distracting…I found this skirt at the Anne Taylor factory and decided it was perfect for this!

You’ve probably seen most of these on the new site, but there’s a couple in there that didn’t make the cut…I love the way they look with my new brand! They’re supposed to feel fun, but classy at the same time…hopefully they actually do and that’s not just in my head…

Oh, and you can find the name of the Giveaway Winner at the bottom of this post!! Yayy!! Thank you so much to everyone who entered! I’m so thankful for your support and feedback!

And thank you Ryan for my headshots…You are the best! I love you :)

Ryan wasnt too upset when I told him we needed to make a pitstop at Starbucks on the way to the VMFA…

The serious look doesn’t really suit my brand..haha…but Ryan made me take a few with my best model face! Thanks to Katelyn James I had some previous experience practicing it…It’s hard though! I feel for your brides who struggle not to laugh when trying to do it!

And I decided to throw in the headshot of Lexie that’s on my site…I took this in my office…she was so little!! She’s growing up too fast…

**And the random Giveaway Winner is…..Amanda Mae!!! Yay! Congratulations!! I will be emailing you soon! :) Thank you so much for supporting me and my new site!!!**

I met Katie her freshman year of college through one of my good friends and I think one of my very first thoughts was that I had never met anyone as sweet as she is before! Literally, I thought that it wasnt possible that she was actually that sweet…but she really is!! She has such a big heart and I’m so excited to see how she and Allen continue to grow as they make a life together…and I’m ESPECIALLY excited because they just bought a house in Richmond not too far from Ryan and I’s so I’m hoping to see a lot of them!

Katie and Allen, I’m so happy for you both…Thank you so much for choosing me to capture your big day! I hope you enjoy my favorites!

Katie and Allen had wine labels made for their out of town guests! Such a cool idea…

Katie, you are STUNNING!

She saw Allen through the window! First look time!!

This was such a beautiful moment…I love first looks!!

Love this!!…

Pretty girls!!

I thought this was such a sweet idea…Katie and her girls had a necklace making party so that they’d each have one to wear on her wedding day!

A prayer before the ceremony…

Katie and Allen read letters of appreciation to their parents…I LOVED this because Ryan and I did this on our wedding day too! It was such a special moment for them!

MARRIED!

I was so happy that the sun came out for a few more portraits!! So much pretty light…

This was an awesome tradition…Katie stands in the middle of a circle of all of the men at the reception and Allen had to break through it to be able to take home his bride! It was so much fun and hilarious to watch!

Congratulations again you two!!

Credits coming soon!

Today is a different kind of Monday though, because it’s my dad’s birthday! He would be 64 today…If you’ve followed the blog then you might know that he died when I was 16 from cancer. Grieving the loss of a loved one is a strange thing because sometimes it feels unexpectedly overwhelming..like it just sucks all of the joy out of you even years later..but today I’m thankful to just feel happy for all of the years that I got to have the best dad in the world and I hope he’s having the best birthday ever up there in heaven!  Me and Ryan have made it a tradition to go out for ice-cream to celebrate his day..so that’s what we’ll be doing tonight :)

I got to see a lot of the people that I love this weekend which was so much fun! On Friday, Ryan and I took a half day and headed to Williamsburg for a day of shopping, golf, and REST! It was so much fun and very needed..we ended the day at a restaurant in the community where Ryan’s grandparents live with a beautiful view overlooking the water….I didn’t want to leave! I also spent Friday praying that it wouldnt rain for Saturday’s wedding…

Aaand it DIDNT! Not a drop! I was so thankful…the weather was gorgeous for these two and I was so happy for them…They got married in Gloucester county at a little spot overlooking the water and it was just breathtaking! Cant wait to share more! I love soft, hazy overcast lighting…

Then Sunday we hosted a Mother’s Day cookout for our families! Family is really important to us and we love when we can all be together and just hang out…I’m so thankful to have been able to celebrate with so many of the amazing moms in my life! Also, it was my first mother’s day as a puppy mom…try not to judge me for saying that…I just love being a puppy mom…Lexie is the best.

Happy Monday!!

Today I wanted to share the progress we’ve made on the dining room! This room still has a long way to go but I guess that’s why these are called progress posts rather than makeover posts! When we first looked at the house and I walked into this room..I knew the paint color had to go right away..I think it’s a Richmond thing to have a deep red colored dining room…but ours is just too small and it made the space feel tiny! So we chose a light grey to make it feel more airy and to give it a modern touch..and I love what the color did for the space! I would paint every room in my house grey if that wouldnt be weird…

I love the space because the colors feel so much more calm and relaxing now…If I’m being honest, most of the time we eat dinner in the living room with Grey’s Anatomy turned on on Netflix..but we are trying to be better about eating in here and having dinner be a more intentional time together!

The reason I wanted to share this room next is because soon Ryan is going to start in on renovating our kitchen! So the first thing to go is going to be that wall in between the dining room and the kitchen to make our old house feel more open and to add a bar to make it a better space for entertaining and having guests over!

Here’s the before from the realty website…kind of blurry but it gives you an idea of what the walls looked like! Yikes:

And here’s the progress!! Isn’t it amazing what paint can do? And curtains? Also you’ll have to forgive me because I just noticed how horribly wrinkly our table cloth is…

That piece on the left was my dad’s and currently holds a ton of our glasses and dish ware because our cabinet space is super limited until we redo the kitchen…Eventually we want to add double doors to the outside backyard patio on that wall to make it feel even bigger and more open!

Hopefully I’ll be sharing these posts more frequently as Ryan starts work on the kitchen and getting rid of that wall!

Happy Thursday!!

It’s been a long journey to get to this point…from deciding on a web platform, to choosing a designer (Krista, you are amazing!!!), to picking colors and deciding what general direction to go in with the new look, to trying to select just a few images for the site that I feel represents my work well, to taking new headshots, etc. etc. etc….The list goes on and on…But can I just tell you how excited I am one more time??? I. am. so. excited!

The support and encouragement from my wedding photography and non-wedding photography friends has meant so much to me as I dove into starting this business a little less than a year ago with a pro-photo blog and a big dream….I am so thankful for you guys! This is a tough industry and at times it felt like maybe I should quit…but thanks to my awesome husband and amazing friends who told me that I should keep working hard if I really love this job and want to make this business happen, I now feel more inspired than ever to give AAP brides the best wedding photography experience I can…and part of that comes from having a quality brand that really represents the overall quality experience that I strive to give my brides!

I also feel like I have to say this one more time…my designer, Krista really outdid herself with this project…I came to her with a vague vision and she somehow managed to turn it into a beautiful, classy, yet fun brand and website that I feel truly represents my bright yet classic images well. When I first contacted Krista several months ago, she sent me a Branding Questionaire…in it she asked for five key words that would describe my ideal brand…and of course because I’m the most indecisive person on the planet I gave her seven (or really eight I guess) instead:

Classy, Quality, Cozy but Sophisticated, Polished, Timeless, Feminine, Charming

She did a pretty good job capturing the essence of those words with the new branding right? Amazing. Krista, I’m so thankful!!

We also drew inspiration from 2 of my favorite websites: Lara Casey’s site and the Hey Gorgeous Events site. I love these websites because they’re easy to navigate and clean, yet so fun and classy! SO I just felt like I also needed to give a shout out to those two fabulous women for being so wonderful and inspirational in more ways than just because they have awesome websites.

So what do you think of the overhaul?? I’m so excited to start this wedding season on a pretty new note! I hope you love it as much as we do!! To celebrate I’m doing a Launch Giveaway of a few of my favorite things!! See the pretty gifts that you could win below…Entering is really easy: Like this blog post below and post it to Facebook with a comment, become a fan of the Annamarie Akins Photography Facebook page (if you’re not already), and leave a comment below! A random winner will be chosen next Wednesday!!

1. A $25 Dollar Starbucks Giftcard 2. This super cute Emily Ley gold foil Print 3. Kate Spade Twirl perfume (which helped to inspire the new brand!)

Happy Wednesday!!

I love Lauren because she just overflows with JOY…she has such a sweet and caring heart and is also so much fun to be around! Their whole wedding day reflected them perfectly because it was so laid back and relaxed..they just wanted to celebrate the fact that they FINALLY get to be husband and wife after dating since high school! I’m so excited for them and so happy that I got to be a part of their day…

I hope you enjoy my favorites!!

First look time!!!

I was so happy that the rain held off during portrait time!

I love these colors!

Lauren, you are SO beautiful!!

These are my favorites!

A gift for Lauren from her soon-to-be mother-in-law…

Ceremony time!

MARRIED!!!

Reception time!!

The father/daughter dance gets me every time…love these…

Party time!

Congratulations again you two!!

The biggest May goal is to help my designer launch my brand new website! (AHHH..cue the applause! It definitely couldn’t be coming at a better time since my current site is kind of falling apart…or maybe you didnt notice how choppy the blog looks or that the get in touch button doesn’t work..which is kind of crucial to receiving inquiries and continuing to run a business don’t you think?). I think it’s going to feel really great to be able to check this goal off the list to say the least!!

So here’s a list for the month of May…April was pretty productive for me if I do say so myself..so let’s hope I can keep it up this month!

Business Goals

• Launch the new site!! We are shooting for Wednesday of THIS week! I am so excited!!
• Finish up putting together my new collateral/packaging to match the new brand…It’s starting to come together!
• Send off the styled shoot I photographed to hopefully be published on a wedding blog!
• Finish putting my office together…most of the stuff is up on the walls at this point, thanks to Ryan…but I still need to ask him to help me hang the curtains! And I need to order some prints for my gallery wall of frames! They are all empty and sad looking right now…
• Finishing entering all 2013 weddings into ShootQ…a few of my brides booked before I started using this software, but it’s so incredibly helpful and awesome that I want to make sure all of my couples are using it!
• Shoot my last 3 May weddings well!

Personal Goals

• I’m not someone who values routine that much…I’m one of those people that gets bored easily if things are TOO consistent. But I think there is value to living consistently in some ways…for example, I want to continue working out consistently with my friend and workout buddy Melanie, I want to consistently make our bed every day because Ryan really appreciates it, I want to consistently take Lexie for long walks on Sundays together  (or at least whenever I dont have a Sunday wedding!) because it’s good for her and our little family, I want to consistently keep track of our food budget each month, etc. I think living consistently in some ways builds good habits and soon enough these things will hopefully become second nature!
• Eat healthy and limit ice-cream intake! I’m pretty good at maintaining a healthy diet overall…I just dont usually ever crave fried foods or too many carbs…but ice-cream is my weakness…right now I’m hung up on the Ben and Jerry’s greek yogurt flavors…sooo I’m thinking I should try to avoid eating it every day.
• Begin work on our kitchen renovation…we have the design for it in mind..but now it’s just about time to knock out the wall in between our kitchen and dining room…I’m excited for our old house to feel more open!
• Blog dining room progress..I took pictures of the progress we’ve made on the dining room so I want to share them before the wall is gone!
• Get rid of junk…our second bedroom is still kind of a hoarders paradise right now..or at least one half of the room…we want to clean it out and get it looking nice and welcoming so that people will actually want to stay with us!
• In church yesterday each person in the service was given a fortune cookie that had a little slip of paper inside challenging us to do something nice for someone…the theme of the message was repreSENT…As a Christian, I’m called to represent Christ by going out and being his hands and feet..too often Christians live in a so-called theoretical bubble where we just talk about what were supposed to do as followers of Christ but never actually take the step and actually do anything about it…My slip of paper said to surprise a neighbor by cooking them a meal..soo that’s a goal for this  month too! On top of already trying to cook better for my husband…we’ll see how it goes!

And these two are coming to the blog tomorrow! I loved the peek Lauren stole at her soon-to-be husband in the middle of the prayer during their rainy ceremony…also that her dad is holding an umbrella for them…so sweet! I cant wait to share these!

Happy Monday!!

Well anyway…now she’s a sophomore in college and she leads a small group through InterVarsity, which is one of the on campus Christian ministries at JMU…I was part of  a small group through CRU at Virginia Tech and also lead a small group during my time there…It’s such a great way to get involved and to get to know other women who are there for you and who want to support you, encourage you, and help you grow in relationship with Christ! These girls are there for each other and you can tell that they are a close knit group even though they’ve only been together for less than a year! We thought it would be really fun to take some pictures of them as a group to help document this time in their lives (it goes by too fast!!!). All of these girls are so gorgeous inside and out and made me feel so welcome!..I had the best time walking around downtown Harrisonburg with them and getting to know them a little bit! Enjoy my favorites!!

I love these shirts that they had made for their group!

Pretty girls! This was right before a random guy walking by asked if I would take a picture of him with them on his iPhone…

My sister is so pretty!!

BEAUTIFUL!!!

Love this…

We had to take some silly ones…

I just loved the one on the left, and the one on the right is my sister with her co-leader!!

And then I had to get a picture with her too of course…Love you Angelika!!

Happy Thursday!!

I love nostalgia..I’m probably going to be one of those grandma’s that makes their grandkids listen to the same story a hundred times just because I love to reflect…Looking back I think that one of the things that I’m most proud of is that I’ve waited to move forward with investing in my business until I felt really ready and had earned the money through it to put back into it…Of course I think being ready to invest in a quality brand looks different for different business owners and in no way am I suggesting that the way I did it was the only way to do it…And I think a lot depends on what success looks like for you. I’m just hoping that maybe my thoughts are helpful to someone out there! Ryan and I only ever invested a relatively small amount of capital to purchase my first professional camera and lens a year and a half ago and the rest of the money that has gone into my business I was able to earn through the business…When I first started out, it was so easy for me to want to invest in all the gear I thought I needed right away because such and such famous photographer had it and to want to drop thousands of dollars on a nice website…but here’s what I learned: It’s better to wait until your really ready.

I know it’s kind of a controversial topic..and some photographers/creative business owners would say it’s best to do up your brand right the first time…but what if you start a business, invest tons of capital, run your business for a year and then still dont book weddings, dislike the stress or crazy hours that come with being a business owner, or just decide your not supposed to be a photographer after all? I guess I look at it this way: there are tons of popular and wildly successful businesses out there that dont have great branding…but they’re popular anyway because they offer a quality product or service!

My current blog that cost 400 dollars carried me farther than I could have dreamed and I am so thankful for it!! I booked all of my weddings this year off a blog that I dont feel represents me, my personality, or my work well at all. (Also it’s kind of malfunctioning a this point…) But it was the perfect tool to get me started as I was getting my footing…I’m saying that to hopefully encourage a photographer who may be where I was (with a blog you aren’t crazy about and a brand that doesn’t feel professional or represent you well…)…because that doesn’t determine the kind of work that you produce!! If your work is improving and you are treating your clients well, then I really believe that you can move forward, regardless of if you have the money to spend on a fancy brand. Don’t get me wrong, I think it can definitely help…I’m hoping my new brand and site will help me continue to move forward! But just like I learned in the very beginning that buying an expensive camera wouldn’t make me a good photographer, neither would investing in a fancy website. I finally felt like my work was outgrowing my current blog so I decided to move forward with hiring a designer to help me rebrand and to create a more professional website for me. And I’m so excited and grateful to feel like I’m ready for it now!! But here’s the thing…I’m really happy I didn’t invest all this money into an expensive website when I first started…I just dont think I was ready…I needed to grow and learn more first and I wanted to develop my style and to figure out who I was as a photographer and to find out if running a photography business was for me. At times it was frustrating because I really wanted a better site and it was so tempting to want to rebrand right away after seeing so many other photographers rebranding, but I realized that a better site wasnt going to make my work better. Sure, maybe it would make me look more professional…but it wouldn’t guarantee that I would book more weddings and it wouldnt make me a better photographer or business person. The only thing I could guarantee at the beginning was that it would put my business in debt. Not that having to invest more money from our personal finances would have been a bad thing necessarily…but I just feel so at peace knowing that my business is actually growing and that it has the potential to be very profitable. I’m not really a risk taker so this just made sense for me:)

I think waiting also allowed me to find out if this business is really something that I wanted for my life…Running a business is a lot of work and there is still so much that I’m learning as I move forward with it…and I really dont think it’s for everyone! I couldn’t run my business without my husband helping me with taxes or bookkeeping…I’m just not good at that stuff! SO waiting to invest in a quality brand could’ve also saved me from spending a lot of money on something that wasnt for me. So for me…when I recognized that this is what the Lord wants me to do with my life at least for the next few years, I decided that I couldn’t continue to grow without a solid brand and website! There are still so many ways that I want to keep growing, but I’m so excited to see where having a new site and brand that I love and feel proud of takes my business!

And just for fun, here’s one more peek at the styled shoot that Michelle Amarillo and I put together…I’m still in the process of editing it to send it off to some wedding blogs (fingers crossed that it gets picked up!!), but this one coordinates with my website colors and is going on my new homepage so I thought I’d share it!!

If you have any thoughts on how to decide when your ready to rebrand, I’d love to hear them too! I think it would be interesting to hear from people who have rebranded more than once…I’m hoping next time I rebrand it will just have to be a mini rebrand and not a complete overhaul!

The lighting was so pretty and it was so nice to feel like we had the city to ourselves…On a Saturday morning that early, the usual hustle and bustle in downtown Richmond was absent (aside from one other photographer wearing a Hawaiian shirt who seemed to be taking nature shots on the capital building grounds (?))…he was actually in the background of a few shots, but I was able to edit him out…haha!

Ashleigh and Alex are such fun people and they made my job so easy!! They went to Tech too so I had so much fun walking around with them and talking about our college experience, as well as hearing more about their upcoming wedding day! I cant WAIT to see Ashleigh as a bride!!

Thanks for letting me capture this special time in your lives you two!! I hope you enjoy my favorites from the morning!

I love how soft the light in the morning is…

Adorable!

Ashleigh, you are too cute!!

These next ones are some of my favorites!

So stylish…I loved their outfit choices…

You both have really good model faces!!

I love black and white photos…They feel so timeless!

Beautiful…

Congratulations again you too! Your wedding day cant come soon enough!!