OH my GOODNESS! I am SO excited to finally share these amaz-azing photos! They are being featured on Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride today (yay!), but I wanted to share them here plus a little more of the story as well! When Geoff and I heard about the Up house replica being built in Herriman, Utah, we got a crazy little idea to drive out from California and take photos there. We are huge Pixar fanatics and absolutely LOVE the movie Up. We watched it the day it came out and we were engaged at the time. So watching the “Married Life” sequence at the beginning of the film really hit home (read: bawling in the theatre). It still makes me tear up every time I watch it. So when we heard about the house, we knew it was a long shot but called up the folks at Bangerter Homes, the creators and builders of the Up house and asked if we could do a photo shoot there in honor of our second wedding anniversary. The team at Bangerter Homes is seriously amazing, because they sad “Yes!” We were thrilled! We later found out that we were the only ones that were able to do a photo shoot inside the house. We felt so special!

With less than a month to plan the shoot and trip, we made many-a-trip to Goodwill (I adore thrifting!) to get the perfect costumes. We have admired Blue Lily Photography for some time now, so we were overjoyed that they could be in Utah and could be our photographers! They did such and incredible job. So, so amazing. Let’s get to it! Here we are as young Carl and Ellie.

I gotta say, wearing overalls is pretty awesome.

The details and work put in to making the house a perfect replica was absolutely amazing. We had so much fun recreating scenes from the movie and making some of our own!

This next set is in the nursery inside the house. I absolutely ADORE the mural that is painted on the wall. This makes us so excited about starting a little family of our own…

Honestly, if this house was in California I would want to buy it. It’s like my dream home! So colorful, fun, quirky, bright, and the KITCHEN! That blue stove had a fridge dishwasher, and microwave to match.

I did a few craft projects for the shoot, one of which was creating our very own adventure book from scratch. I’m excited to fill the pages with all of our adventures and memories, starting with this shoot!

Of course, our photo shoot would not have been complete without BALLOONS!

See my yellow dress? I couldn’t find the perfect bright Ellie dress, so I decided to make one! At 5 in the morning the day before we left, haha! It is sewn from a thrifted vintage bedsheet. I had so much fun making and wearing it!

This one is one of my favorites…

Geoff and I scoped out the perfect hill to re-create Carl and Ellie’s picnic scene. I wish I could go have a picnic here every day.

We brought my picnic basket from home and used my great grandma’s vintage camera.

Grape soda, of course!

Back to the house! Man oh man, did the team at Bangerter Homes do an amazing job creating this house. Here are a few of the details.

Sigh, my man is so handsome.

There were so many meaningful things about this photo shoot. Carl and Ellie’s love is such an inspiration to us as a married couple, and we are excited about having adventures and growing old together. The part where we were “old” Carl and Ellie was pretty emotional.

The only way to describe being able to be in that house, sitting in Carl and Ellie’s chairs next to my love, was surreal and amazing. We literally felt like we were in the movie and we were both just so amazed we were able to do this.

I know I have said “amazing” a lot in this post, but that is because it was! Geoff and I now carry with us SUCH a wonderful memory of our time at the Up House. It was truly unforgettable and an experience we will treasure throughout our lives together. Thank you SOOOOOOO much to the folks at Bangerter Homes for making this all possible! Thank you to Wendy and Tyler from Blue Lilly Photography! You were so fun and the photos are amazing. My hair and makeup was beautifully done by Enizio Hair and Makeup Artistry in Utah. Thank you!!

Be sure to head over to Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride to see their post of our Up House photo shoot!

Last night was so amazingly fun and awesome! My birthday is in a couple days and in all the years I’ve had a birthday near Halloween I have never had a Halloween birthday party. Well, we put an end to that this year! We are suuuuuuuper busy all the time and we don’t get to entertain often, so when we do, we go all out! I has so much fun planning the party, decorating and making treats. We had lots of friends, yummy food, made by Geoff (my personal culinary genius), a costume contest, played games, and we set up our photo booth The Shot Spot! and Here are some photos of the decorations and pics from the party!

Creating this dessert table was one of my favorite parts! I made the cupcakes, but the cake is from Freeport Bakery (THE BEST).

In the pumpkin is Pumkin Pie Dip. Such a hit, sssssooooo yummy. I will be making this for Thanksgiving.

BRAAAAIIIINSSSS! They were really tasty.

In the living room I was going for a haunted house look.

My sister drew me the skeletons in the frame and the “moon” is a lantern from Ikea!

Evil photo.

Covering everything in spiderwebs was a must.

Our mantle, done up Halloween style! The creepy dolls were a Goodwill find.

Our old camera collection fit right in with the decor.

Love these!

One of the best parts of the party was having the Shot Spot set up! We all had way too much fun taking photos. Check out all the costumes—our guests BROUGHT IT! The first one is us, based on one of my favorite childhood movies, Pippi Longstocking! I was Pippi, Geoff was her horse, Alfonzo, Charlie was her monkey, Mr. Nilsson, and Little Dog was a banana.

Star Wars family, the Joker and Harley Quinn, double rainbow with unicorns, and Flint Lockwood (LOVE that movie!) with the Queen of Hearts.

Ryan (sad with no costume), Saints player with Ellie from Up, Barmaid with an A’s player, and a Kinko’s employee with a gypsy and a baby pirate.

Dorothy and the Tinman (and their baby was a scarecrow, so cute!), Holy Crap, a sheriff, and a convict with a doctor.

Barmaids, Belle with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, Superman with a mermaid, and a zombie bride and groom.

Me and my three sisters!

My friends Brit and Tim, who recently got engaged in Disneyland. Adorable.

Here are some more pics from the party!

We we had a costume contest and finished things up with my FAVORITE party game, “Names in a Hat”. Seriously, if you have never played this before it is the BEST! So much fun!

This is me trying to get my team to guess Jim Carrey…

Thank you everyone who made the party SO FUN! Thanks to my sisters for helping put up all the decorations and thanks to Geoff for making the food! Oh and I owe it to Pinterest for helping me find so many great ideas! My actual birthday is on Wednesday and I plan on having a Pixar movie marathon and scrapbooking. yay! Happy Halloween everyone, stay safe out there!

About 4 years ago, Geoff and I started a journey. It all began with a friend asking If I’d be willing to photograph her wedding the following year. Geoff and I had photographed a few of my family’s weddings and with those under our belt, combined with our years of photography experience, we were up for the challenge. We set up shop (so to speak), built a website, got the contracts and all the business stuff together. When 2008 ended, on the eve of the new year, Geoff and I set a goal to book 5 weddings in 2009. “5 weddings,” we thought. “How are we ever going to find 5 people to let us shoot their wedding!?” Well, you have to start somewhere!

What happened next, was so amazing, unexpected, thrilling, and most of all, life-changing. The inquiries started coming in. Not from friends or family, but complete strangers that found us and recognized something in our passion, and in our love of people and photography. We booked 17 weddings that year. 17! We could not believe it! It was a crazy year of meeting so many amazing couples, working REALLY hard to be better and better, and most of all, a year for us to realize what we were meant to do in life. In 2010 we photographed 29 weddings and 2011 we’ll finish out at nearly 40.

While The Goodness was growing and growing, Geoff and I had been working our 40 hour a week day-jobs for Apple, Inc. As you can imagine, we were working literally constantly everyday, and sacrificed so much of our social life, free time, family time, etc. to keep up the level of quality and customer service that our growing client base had grown to expect. It was the most rewarding thing in the world, and while we loved every minute of it, it was EXHAUSTING!

Today I am beyond overjoyed to tell you all, my wonderful and loyal readers and clients, that we quit our days jobs. It’s a scary step, leaving the security of a corporate job, but we couldn’t be happier to be focusing all of our time and effort toward something that we love and that we believe in with all our hearts. For us, “The Goodness” truly lives up to it’s name, as that is exactly what it has brought into our lives. Everyday we still cannot believe that we are living this amazingly incredible life, but we are. And for that, we want to thank each and every one of you: our wonderful clients, our blog readers, our supportive friends and family, it’s because of you that our lives are so fortunate and so full of love and goodness.

Here’s a photo from Paul and Lesley’s Shot Spot a couple weeks ago. This pretty sums up how we are feeling right now:

Some days may be crazy, full of stress and work with no end in sight. (I tell ya, being a wedding photographer is much less glamorous than you might think.) But then there are the days we actually get to spend with couples being in love and showing each other love. Smiling, laughing, having fun together, and knowing they’ll never be without one another. And we’re there too, making those little moments live forever. Moments looking into each other’s eyes, eyes that get all squinty because he’s making her laugh so hard, the warm embraces, the quiet stares that say so much without a word. As photographers, Geoff and I feel so lucky to be a witness to love. I know it all sounds so cliché, but we truly believe that love is a beautiful thing. It’s why we do what we do.

I’m eager to share these two engagement sessions from last weekend. These two photos make me smile so. We took Aaron and Ashley to a beautiful blossoming orchard in Dixon. It was magical, let me tell you.

Then there was Jeremy, who is a crack-up, paired with Rachel, who is sweet as can be, at William Land Park on a gorgeous afternoon.

Last summer, we photographed Diane and Matthew’s wedding at Fairytale Town which is inside Land Park. It was not too long before we went from being Lisa Welge Photography to who we are now, The Goodness. We bought a little piece of history in Fairytale Town’s Yellow Brick Road to mark the start of something big. It has been such an amazing ride. We got to see our brick for the first time the day of Rachel and Jeremy’s session. It’s a pretty cool feeling having our brick there, knowing we’ll be able to take our future kids to see it! Just like the wonderful couples we get to work with, we are so excited for all that life has in store for us.

Wow, Geoff and I really have soooo much to be thankful for this year. We’ve been so lucky to experience so much and meet so many wonderful people this year. Here at casa Bardot, this Thanksgiving is particularly exciting because we are hosting for the very first time ever at our house. I have been having a ton of fun decorating our dinner table and I thought it would be fun to share.

I was most excited bout the centerpiece. I thrifted a bunch of candlesticks and spray painted them purple to match the napkins.

Okay, off to finish getting ready for my family to come over! Geoff has what I’m certain will be the most delicious turkey ever in the oven now and is about to make some homemade mac and cheese. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!