Sara Gray Photography Portland, Oregon

I think most of you know that I like to have projects to work on and keep things interesting. Well, over the past few months I took some time to develop a fun idea into a super-helpful product. After photographing more than 100 weddings, I’ve seen firsthand the things that brides forget or need in a pinch. So I developed this cute little kit that you can take along on your wedding day and be totally covered. Best of all, it’s tiny at 6×6 inches and will easily tuck into your bag for wedding emergencies.

Each “For the Bride” kit contains: Band-aids, white chalk (for masking stains on white cloth), a mini lint-roller, breath mints, fashion tape, bobby pins, needles and thread, tissues, blister bandages, safety pins, pain reliever, stain remover, clear nail polish, scissors, chocolate (the good kind — I promise!) and emery boards.

They sell for a cool $30, including shipping. I think you probably need one. So go pick one up!

Of course, these little guys would make a really fantastic gift for the bride-to-be in your life. For Christmas, for her shower, just because.

Folks, I’ve got a new party trick: Meet the PHOTOBOOTH! It’s been a hit at a handful of weddings this summer and fall. If you’re interested in having the photobooth at your wedding, it’s a simple add-on to any wedding collection and it includes digital negatives of you and your friends and family hamming it up all night. Here’s a few fun ones from Kirsten & Cody’s wedding:

It’s a fun way for your guests to interact, have fun and leave some silly, fun or totally wacky memories behind from your wedding. The photobooth is in full commission for the 2012 wedding year and starts at $700, so ask me about adding it on to your wedding collection.

Well, it’s a day I’ve been waiting for a long time now. Today is the big launch of MarryThis!, my new project that I’ve been working on behind the scenes (with an amazingly talented team) for months now.

MarryThis! is a series of wedding planning guides that are tailored to specific weddings. So, you know that thing when you’re trying to plan a wedding and you read all these wedding blogs and magazines and then you start to feel really overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start? That’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid. You pick the wedding you love and want to have, we tell you exactly how to pull it off, from start to finish. We share budget information (real numbers, of course) and inside information about vendors and the industry and all the stuff you need to basically feel like you’ve had a wedding planner’s help — but for only $40.

Needless to say, I’m excited about the launch. Today we launched the first two guides in the series and we’re launching another each month for the rest of the year. Prepare yourselves, this is going to be exciting!

In celebration of the new launch, I’m giving away a free guide to one lucky blog reader. To win, just comment on this post by midnight tonight. I’ll pick a commenter at random and announce the winner on my Facebook page (and via e-mail) on Wednesday.

Please check out our new shopping cart and site, read a little about the two guides out for release today and sign up for e-mail updates (at the bottom right corner of the site) if you want to see the next guides as they are unveiled. And thanks to all of you great blog readers for your support!

I love this time of year, because it’s the time of year that I get to see the final product of all my work on wedding days in the format of wedding albums. I love my wedding albums — I print through a company called KISS Wedding Books, and they are really amazing books.

I wanted to share how much I love these KISS books, and show you a few that I’ve received lately. I love the vibrant colors of the books, the bright pop of colors inside the books with their great printing and their durability.

Thanks, KISS, for making me look good!

Earlier this week, I had the chance to do something really fun. I’m a wedding photographer, but it’s so fun to be able to work on something new that stretches me as an artist and lets me try things I only dream about. I got to shoot FASHION. Like, with real beautiful models and gorgeous clothes and crazy shadowy light. It was a total blast. Here are just a couple of photos so you can see what fun I had.

Be looking out for the whole collection when Portland’s own WeMa Designs introduces their fall line!

If you have been reading my blog for awhile now, you know I’m a huge fan of GemKitty. Their design-your-own process is perfect for everyday, but lends itself particularly well to bridesmaid gifts since you can personalize each piece of handcrafted jewelry. And any day now, they’ll be launching design-your-own earrings! I recently got together with the masterminds behind GemKitty to help them with some new photos of their beautiful stuff.

This is Cecilia. She’s stunning and an up-and-coming Portland model. I loved photographing her!

This model is my sister, Emily. She loves earrings and wears them like crazy, so she was so excited to be a model for this shoot!

There are so many great varieties of earrings that’ll be available through GemKitty once they launch.

Thanks, gals, for being so fun to photograph! Now get over to GemKitty and get yourself a necklace or some new earrings!

Every once in awhile, I get the opportunity to work on a cool project with a brand or product line. Recently, I paired up with SameUnderneath, a really cool eco-conscious clothing brand based in Portland, to photograph their spring line.

I thought I’d share a few of the photos here — aren’t the clothes awesome? Not to mention we had a beautiful afternoon and some seriously good-looking models to make this shoot really fun.

I just got the above sweater. It’s amazing.

I love all the earth tones throughout the collection — very Portland.

Thanks to the gang at SameUnderneath and my pal Noel for lining the shoot up — I had a ton of fun!

I wanted to share some extras from Rachel and Neal’s engagement session, which was sort of train-themed and came out super cute. Below is the video from their session.

Rachel and Neal from Sara Gray on Vimeo.

Rachel and Neal also ordered a guest book that’s bright green — it’s sitting on my desk right now and I want to show it to the world, it’s so cute. Here’s the design.

Two years ago, when I got married, Eric and I thought of an idea for a creative guest book solution, and we made our own book featuring our engagement photos, so people could sign it like a yearbook. Now it’s one of our most favorite heirlooms from the wedding, with everyone’s kind thoughts written among photos of us together.

When I started my business, I wanted my clients to have that same favorite collection from their wedding, so I’ve offered photo guest books from the beginning. This year, though, I’m having my books printed by KISS, my fabulous album company, and they are amazing linen books with beautiful photo paper and lots of space for guests to sign throughout.

Since I blogged Erica and Nick’s engagement session on Monday, I wanted to show off their guest book design here — enjoy!

That might have been a bit of a lyric stretch, but I got a kick out of it. I’m so excited to share with you some photos that I recently shot for GemKitty — where you can design your own necklace. It’s such a fun site, and I love being able to watch their business grow.

We had loads of fun doing this shoot, running around in the South Waterfront with two amazing models (Maalaea and Stephanie) and a whole ton of necklaces.

Above, Maalaea is wearing “The Dash” — a GemKitty classic design. You can go make your own with whatever material you want.

I love including the Portland Streetcar in shoots — it’s such a local touch!

The team at GemKitty are so good at pairing multiple necklaces together in a way that looks cool.

Stephanie is a total yogi — so we went for it here. I love how part of her personality shines through.

Thanks to Arwa & Todd from GemKitty and Stephanie and Maalaea for making this such a fun day!