Hello Venice! | St. Louis Destination Wedding Photographers

Okay, I’m just going to warn you right now before you read this post (but you might have already skipped all my rambling and headed straight for the photos by now) …. My hubby and I are a little nutty, this I know. Actually he wasn’t nuts, but now he is that he’s married to me. My nuttiness has me obsessed as ever with photography. I mean obsessed.

So we just got back from this really amazing trip to Italy where I consumed over 7 gelato cones (double scoops), 6 pizzas, countless bowls of pasta, 22 cappuccinos and nearly 30 glasses of red wine (that doesn’t even count the glasses of white!) in 10 days! But who’s counting calories anyway? Not me! To make a really long tale of a story short, we flew into Milan and then visited Venice, Florence and Rome. While in Florence we took a day trip into Chianti wine country. I’ve decided to create 3 separate blog postings, hoping to do justice to chronicling all the good times. This is only blog posting 1 so you haven’t missed a thing! I was so extremely proud of myself for keeping a journal every day on the trip! A moment-to-moment take on what we did each day, how many yummy “capps” and gelatos we had, and where we found all these great indulgences. The trip was amazing. Period. I kept telling Ryan that I thought we were on a movie set. Everything seemed so surreal and beautiful. So let’s start with Venice, and I can further explain why we are truly nuts and elaborate on my obsession with all things photography.

We’ve been planning this trip for over a year now, but I only started researching things in December, and of course, Ryan is obsessed with reading Trip Advisor. Anyone else like that? So you might remember our very very special engagement photo shoot in Paris. Our friends One and Only Paris Photography captured it perfectly, and I really wanted something like this in Italia! I began to scour sites, wedding blogs and Google for an international photographer. Bah! I couldn’t find anyone in Venice or Italy for that matter to suit my taste! Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t any good photographers in Italy, I just couldn’t find one that met my style. I was on page 17 of the Google results before I just decided to give up. Ryan had the *brilliant* idea that we could totally do this ourselves. Because I was desperate, and actually excited that Ryan was helping with ideas, I was all for making it happen. We ended up buying a light-weight travel tripod (yes, I lugged that in my luggage…actually, no, I think I put that one in Ryan’s. Mine was full of shoes.) and a cheap MacGyver-looking remote shutter release. AND a beautiful dress. As soon as I saw it I knew with it’s colors and flowy-ness that is was going to perfect for our shoot in Venice. It really was perfect, don’t you think? 🙂

Hello Venice! This is a city where they will tell you to get lost. Well, it’s all fun and games, until you really are lost and your feet and back are killing you. When we arrived, we somehow didn’t have the address to our hotel! So I asked for directions to our hotel from another hotel. I think his exact words were “Go over the bridge, then left … then left, right, left.” By golly he was right, we found it! We actually didn’t have the greatest weather on the trip, so thank goodness we decided to get up early for the shoot (like 8AM 😉 ) while the sun was shining and the narrow, windy little streets were less crowded. But the tiny little streets posed a real challenge! We got so lost just looking for good shooting locations! So when I told Ryan that we could wrap up in an hour or so, it really turned into almost 5 hours. It’s so hard to do a love shoot with a tripod!! But we did it. We don’t like being on display and generally don’t like being in front of the camera. We are more awkward than anything. And half the time we were actually squabbling – mainly because we are both so insecure about a lot of things! I think at one point Ryan told me that I was a terrible subject. 😉 That’s because I didn’t want my smile to be too gummy, or I wanted him to tell me if I was slouching (always) or if my little elf ear was showing through my hair or you know, checking to make sure my dress looked okay (which he replied he wasn’t a stylist!) ha! You know, normal girly stuff. Believe me, he’s the same way!