Sara Gray Photography Portland, Oregon

I don’t know if you love jewelry as much as I do, but one of my favorite local jewelry designers is Amy Wing. She makes these gorgeous hammered metal pieces and to boot, is a really great friend. So of course I was so excited when she wanted to work together for her fall 2011 lookbook! I love this collection, which was based on Italian metalwork. Check out some of the photos below from our shoot at Domaine Drouhin Winery and styled by Kimberly Brandt of Billede Design.

We worked with such beautiful models on this shoot! I think Irina and Amber look like they could be sisters.

Love! Check out Amy’s site to buy a piece from this gorgeous collection. They’d be so lovely for a wedding.

I’m so luck to be able to work with such talented wedding professionals. One very, very early morning a couple of months ago, I teamed up with a big team of talented vendors to shoot this Twilight-inspired inspiration shoot, which was styled in an amazing way and such a pleasure to shoot. This shoot was featured last week on The Knotty Bride, too — so fun to see it there!

The models and makeup and hair artists on this shoot were amazing to work with — I mean, look at these people! They’re beautiful.

Look at this lineup of lovely ladies! One of the fiercest groups I’ve ever photographed all at once. It’s almost blinding, isn’t it?

Thanks to my favorite prop stylist Kim from Billede Design for making this shoot a breeze, and to Ellie Williams for coming up with such a great concept!

Anyone else feeling inspired by fall? A little while back, I got together with some amazing vendors and we put together a fun inspiration shoot celebrating the colors of fall. We were hosted at Bella Via, a great new little venue in Sherwood that is adorable and glamorous.

These placecards (and the invitations you’ll see later) came from Erin LaFavor with Foosie Design. I love her attention to detail!

We brought in two models (in gorgeous bridal gowns from Charlotte’s Weddings & More) to show two different sides of the fall bride — one is more playful and relaxed and the other is all-out bridal glamour.

These stunning florals (and all of our table styling) is from Lisa Martin of Bloomsberry Floral. She’s so genius with beautiful things — LOOK at that bridal bouquet!

Hair guru Madeline Roosevelt did these beautiful braided styles on both of our brides and Jessica Belknap, master of the makeup brush, made them glow.

Look at Lisa’s brilliant recycled beer-bottle table centerpiece — I love the idea of using something recycled and so simple to create depth on a table. She also had the smart idea of having a beer-and-nut bar at this wedding. Wouldn’t that be fun and the perfect idea for fall?

The jewelry above (necklace and earrings) is from Elephantine and the jewels below are from Grayling. Love both your work, Rachel and Katy!

Loved working on this shoot with all of your super-talented vendors. Thanks so much for making my job tons of fun!

I have been busting at the seams waiting for the day I could share this shoot with you, blog readers! This was a collaboration between some amazing Portland-area vendors that we put together back in June. Kimberly Brandt of Billede Design came up with this concept and I totally loved shooting it. She took bright colors, set them against a backdrop of clean white and made it all pop. Check out all these cool details!

These awesome invites came from the genius gals at hi,friend design, those great flowers from the lovely Rosemary Stafford and those cool ceramic bowls are from Pigeontoe Ceramics. Cake? Erin from Sugarhouse Cake. All get my huge votes of confidence.

I love Kim’s ability to style beautiful scenes from simple materials. Above? She striped the table with craft-store ribbon and adorned each place setting with a yo-yo in a bright color. Such a smartie with an eye for detail.

That awesome headpiece comes from Jade Rose Designs, and the bride’s jewelry comes from Fresh Tangerine. Her dress is a pretty amazing Vera Wang.

Thanks to all the vendors who made this shoot amazing — it was a blast working with all of you! It was one of my favorite inspiration shoots ever and I can’t wait to do it again!

I’m so excited to share this shoot today — it’s one I worked on awhile back with a great team at one of my favorite places: Pacific City, Ore. I imagined a simple beach celebration with s’mores and laid-back style. Here’s what we came up with!

I love working with fun vendors, and this group was so amazing. First, I brought on local florist Annie Chen from Floral Sunshine, who did the fabulous centerpiece and bouquet, plus this cute little chair-back heart piece (above left). Above right, gorgeous “seagulls” letterpress invitations from Hello, Lucky!

This lovely model is Courtney Jade — she’s a local photographer, too, and was our bride for the day. I love her hair and makeup, which was done by the genius DeAnn at Face Body Beauty.

The gals at Hello, Lucky! also created table numbers and placecards that match the invitations. Love those guys!

Courtney’s headband and dress are from Nordstrom, and we found a lot of the little details at IKEA (those blue glass bottles, plus the little anemone-looking pink ceramic dealie on the table and the lantern). Love budget shopping!

Courtney’s earrings and dainty gold necklace are from Elephantine. They are gorgeous and I love how soft and simple they both are.

I really loved working on this shoot — I hope you enjoyed looking at it! Thanks to the great vendors who worked on it with me, can’t wait to do it again!

Awhile back, I met the lovely ladies from Kathy Evans Beauty Studio in Seattle. A collaboration was born (after their collaboration and feature in MarryThis! Guide 04) and we set a date to meet up again to have lots of fun playing dress-up and putting together a 1960s fashion-inspired photo shoot. Here are some of the photos from the shoot, which we put together at the Hotel Deluxe.

Kathy and her team, Sandra and Kira, put together four looks for us with two models, Alyssa & Kathryn. I loved the variety they could do from one look to the next. These ladies are seriously talented.

I loved the opportunity to play with such a fun group of women, just discovering what fun makeup and big hair can be.

Thank you so much to Kathy Evans and company for making this all happen! It was a really fantastic shoot and I can’t wait until we get to collaborate again!

The Inspired Creations contest is one of my favorite things to participate in — last year, if you remember, I entered with my pals Kim + Bonnie from Punch and we won! That was a blast, and so this year I worked with a great team to put together another concept and enter again. The competition is fierce (the contest is still going!) but we had a blast and we can’t wait to see the outcome. The contest is hosted by two of my favorite blogs, The Sweetest Occasion and Elizabeth Anne Designs.

Now, to the fantastic talent that is our team: First, Madi Roosevelt. I’m sure many of you have seen her work before, because we’ve worked together in the past, but I have to give her serious props for all her hard work. Madi works overtime, all the time, and she is so talented. She did hair and makeup for our model, Emily (who is also my little sister) and I loved the look.

Love that hairpiece? You’d love the woman who made it, too. She’s Erin Brooks from Serephine, and she’s become a good friend to me over the last few months as we’ve worked together on some photo shoots and spent some time together. I love her work, and for this shoot she created a totally new piece, called the Reina. It’s now available in her adorable online shop.

We shot this entire shoot at the fabulous Jupiter Hotel in SE Portland. They set us up in a glamorous room, which features a larger-than-life Marilyn Monroe mural on the wall. How could you go wrong? We also created this fabric-flower bouquet specifically for the shoot.

Emily’s jewelry is so fab in this shoot — we layered on hammered gold and silver chains from Amy Wing Designs. Amy’s work is really ethereal and gorgeous, and Emily looked really great with those delicate chains around her neck and wrist.

If you’re curious, the dress is from Nordstrom and those shoes are from Zappos (but have since been discontinued in this color). They were so tall and hard to walk in, Emily had to slip on her other shoes (those black ones on the left, above) to go outside.

Since the contest is still going, we’d appreciate any comments you want to share on our contest entry, which appeared on Elizabeth Anne Designs a few weeks ago. I’ll keep you all posted about how we do!

I’ve been spending a whole lot of my time and energy on developing a great collection of MarryThis! guides — this last month, it was so fun to work on this one. Along with a stellar team, we put together a 1940s Americana theme wedding photo shoot that is now MarryThis! Guide 04: 1940s Americana Wedding. I wanted to share some of the photos here.

We put together this wedding concept at The Museum of Flight in Seattle — what a stunning location!

Our gorgeous flowers came from Liz Ruznac with Fleur:ology. She used lipstick red blooms throughout, and it came out so nice!

The incomparable Erin Brooks from Serephine provided us with awesome hair accessories, including the Gemma Veil (above, on Michelle). Kathy Evans Beauty Studio did our models’ hair and makeup — amazing!

Our invitations (aren’t they adorable?) came from Champagne Sunday on Etsy.

Look at that amazing candy and dessert buffet! The master of the sweets table Liz Gomez from The Candy Buffet used vintage treats to make it happen.

I have to say thank you to our fantastic models — Michelle and Andrew, and our bridesmaid model Kirsten. These guys were so fun to work with!

Here’s a little sneak peek of a few pages from the guide below — check it out and if it’s you, head on over to the site and pick one up. I’m so excited about this one!

I absolutely can’t keep things to myself sometimes. We’re hard at work behind the scenes working on our next MarryThis! guide (which comes out May 1), so here’s a little peek of what’s to come in that guide!

Happy Thursday!

I’ve only shared a sneak peek to this shoot before, because I’ve been saving it for today — tomorrow, we launch MarryThis! guide number 3, and this is the shoot featured in that guide. This was an absolute blast to put together and I am so excited to finally share it with you!

We started off the inspiration for this charming morning reception with doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnut (where else?), a DIY milk bar with regular and chocolate milk and those cute little doughnut flags from Foosie Design.

Those great invitations are also from Foosie Design, and our model for this shoot is my dear friend Christy Rimrodt of Studio Christy and her husband Kirk (also known as the INCREDIBLY good sport in this scenario).

Our flowers came from the talented Liz Rusnac of Fleur:ology Design. She was so creative to use “java jackets” in her modern centerpieces.

Christy’s hair and makeup were done by Austie Eckley (and that fab hairpiece came from Austie’s Etsy shop) and the dress is by Claire La Faye.

Finally, the lovely backdrop is the Leftbank Annex and all our lovely tables, chairs and some of the dishes came from The Party Place, who are always amazingly supportive.

Thank you to the team who made this happen! This was such a fun shoot to work on and you were all a blast. If you’re loving the look of this wedding, be sure to check out the new MarryThis! guide, which will launch tomorrow morning, and we’ll tell you exactly how to do it for your own reception!