I wanted to share that my friends over at Dress of the Month Club are introducing their September dress today! We did the shoot about a week ago, and had loads of fun with back-to-school and loads of apples!

If you love it, head on over to their site and order your own September dress!

It’s become a really fun way to work with another local, women-owned business for me to be able to shoot the Dress of the Month Club’s dresses from time to time. I love the August dress — not just because it’s cute, but because it was inspired by my dear friend Arwa, who runs GemKitty Jewelry.

The dress is so perfectly her! And it can be so perfectly yours, too, if you want to get your very own this month from Liz and Kirsten, the brilliant minds behind this fun project.

Thanks, gals, for a great time as usual!

On Friday, we went to Crave Portland’s “Up in the Air Summer Affair” party on the roof at Hotel Deluxe. It was so fun! I thought I’d share some photos.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t know there were such high concentrations of beautiful people in Portland. They were out in full force!

Lots of local shops like Betsy & Iya were out showing some of their cool products.

These are our friends Todd & Arwa. Arwa is the face behind GemKitty Jewelry, where you can design your own necklace or earrings.

And that’s us! Thanks, Todd, for wielding the camera with such finesse. And thanks, Crave, for another fun event!

I love Oregon Bride magazine — it’s a fun local publication that highlights local weddings and vendors and ideas. So of course I was excited when I got invited to the annual Best of Bride issue launch party! It was last night at Pure Space in the Pearl District (a fab new urban wedding venue), and it was so much fun!

Pure Space is full, full, full of light. That’s a real change from some wedding venues — I’d love to shoot a wedding here!

The bouquets pictured above are from Vibrant Table’s in-house florist, Page Winograd. I worked with Vibrant Table and Page’s flowers on a fabulous wedding last weekend, and I can vouch for them. Fantastic, professional and really beautiful stuff.

Above, catered bites from The Stockpot (left) and Vibrant Table (right). The veggies were pickled, and super yummy.

Check out those floor-to-ceiling windows! I also loved the yellow and silver/gray color theme for the party. The chocolate mousse was also from Vibrant Table.

Liz from The Candy Buffet was there in full force, matching the party’s color scheme with her super cute candy and sweets arrangement.

Thanks so much, Oregon Bride, for a fantastic party and a chance to see my wedding industry pals right smack in the middle of wedding season (when we usually don’t have a free second to hang). I had loads of fun and I can’t wait for next year!

Well, it’s true, isn’t it? I discovered that everyone loved pie when I met my love, Eric, who doesn’t like cake. But he does love pie.

I love to bake and I thought I would take a moment on the blog before the weddings start coming like crazy all summer to introduce you to some of the yummy things I bake. I keep a separate, fun blog where I store my recipes and while I don’t have a ton, I do have a fun little collection that continues to grow. If you want to see what I do when I’m not photographing weddings, this is a good spot to see that.

Today, I made a strawberry-blueberry tart. It was so delicious, and although it was unintentional, it’s also a little bit patriotic, which is so fitting for this weekend.

Feel free to check out Everyone Loves Pie for the recipe and make it this 4th of July weekend for friends!

I had trouble sleeping last night, and I’ll tell you why. When I come up on the brink of my wedding season opening up and letting loose, it’s like the top of the first hill on a roller coaster, just waiting to ride it down the big, pit-in-your-stomach-inducing freefall drop. I am so excited for all the fantastic couples whose weddings I’ll be photographing this summer, and also sort of nervous with them. I remember what it’s like to be a bride, trying to sleep well and take care of yourself and also finish 8,000 DIY wedding tasks and deal with your family and your nerves and parties and congratulations and fitting into the dress. It’s a big deal.

But there’s nothing better than watching the ride as details fall into place, couples remember why they first fell in love and declare it to everyone they know, tears of joy come at the most unexpected moments, and at the end of the day, two people are husband and wife and they ride off into the sunset together.

To all my brides and grooms this summer, HERE WE GO! Hold on tight. Summer is here, and your weddings are right around the corner, whether that means this weekend or into October. The ride is going to be good, and I can’t wait to be there with you.

(Photos of me by Missy Bachmeier, Take 5 Photo)

I write on this blog and share photos three times a week, and I love knowing that people come and read it and (hopefully) enjoy it. But sometimes I get to wondering, who are all those people coming to the site and reading the blog?

So today, on this crazy Friday, I wanted to do something totally different and turn things around to you, the readers. What I want to know is, who are you? If you don’t mind terribly, come out of your dark blog-reading corner and introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, what you do and how long you’ve been reading the blog or something you’d like to see or read about here. Are you a bride-to-be or past bride? A member of the wedding industry?  My mom?

Hi, I’m Sara. Who are you?

Alright, alright — I know it was yesterday. But I wanted to share some photos of my family from Mother’s Day on the blog. Eric and I hosted brunch at our place (which is always sort of comical since I have a really big family and a rather small apartment). But we had loads of fun and lots of delicious food.

I made some totally DIY centerpieces from aluminum cans, Mason jars, tealights and flowers from my mom’s garden. They came out so fun!

This is my mom, opening some of her gifts. She’s the best.

In my family, we have these “You are Special Today” plates and you get to eat off of them on your birthday or other special days. I got my red plate for my wedding. We had to pool our resources to come up with red plates for all three moms: my mom, my aunt and my older sister. They’re together below.

I also made scones for only the second time ever and they were pretty delicious.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the great moms out there — and the ones in my family!

I don’t know what it’s like to have kids of my own — I don’t even have a dog. But the closest thing to it in my life are my two nephews and my niece. I was there when all three of them were born and I’ve watched them grow up over the last 15 years. It’s pretty crazy watching someone morph from helpless baby into, say, fierce water polo player who is taller than my husband (that would be my oldest nephew, Forrest). I recently snapped their yearly photos and I thought I’d share, since I can’t believe how big they’re getting.

This is Forrest. He’ll be 15 next week. That blows my mind, since I vividly remember taking him to school as my show-and-tell item in the fifth grade (yes, my sister actually let me do that).

Kailan is sort of like my soul mate — we are both middle children, but also sort of oldest since our older sibling is much older. We’re a little on the sensitive side and I love that about this guy. At eight years old now, he’s also a smart one, and he wants to be an electrical engineer when he grows up.

Draven is the wild card of the bunch. She’s six, going on thirty. She’s sassy all the time and no one can figure out where she gets it from. Neither of her parents have any idea either. In any case, she’s pretty cute.

Thanks, my lovelies, for letting me photograph you (agaaaaaaaaaain). You’d think having an aunt as a photographer would be a bonus. But you’d be wrong.

So I came back a little earlier than I’d planned to the blog to wish everyone a happy new year! I’m so excited for what the new year is going to bring for Sara Gray Photography, and I wanted to share some of those plans here so you can all look forward to it with me. (Here’s Eric and I in our Christmas photo this year).

More quality, less quantity: I’ve been blogging five days a week here on the blog since April 2009, and after having a few conversations with readers, I’ve decided that I’m going to cut back my posting in favor of more in-depth, high-quality posts. In 2010, I’ll be posting twice a week, which will give more of you the chance to see my work for longer before it’s buried under other posts. Those two weekly posts will be longer, featuring more photos and more details about the great people in them. If you’ve got things you’d like to see on the blog, don’t hesitate to let me know!

Weddings, weddings, weddings: I’ve set as a goal for Sara Gray Photography to photograph 25 weddings in 2010. I’ve already got a few on my calendar, but not all of them! How can you help me reach that goal? Tell your friends who are getting engaged (70% of engaged couples make it official over the holidays, so you probably have a few engaged friends now!) and if they book, you get a fun referral gift from me.

So you want to be a model?: I’m revamping my senior rep program this year, and I’ll be announcing that in late March on the blog. If you’ve got friends who are high school juniors (or you’re a high school junior), let them know about the blog and the program so that they can save money on senior photos, plus be able to earn cool free stuff by recommending their friends and classmates.

2009 was a great year, and I’ll be sharing next week on the blog about the wedding ideas that inspired me over the last year. But I’m also looking forward to what 2010 will bring!