Sara Gray Photography Portland, Oregon

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love spending time with family, taking time to be thankful and of course, pumpkin pie. This year’s a little different though — this year, we’re 7,000 miles away enjoying Indian food and celebrating Jocelyn & Praket’s wedding celebration in India.

One thing I’ll still be doing this Thanksgiving, though, is being thankful! For my family and friends, and for opportunities like this to travel around the world and celebrate with couples on one of their happiest days.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And don’t worry — there are tons more India photos to come.

I know that some of you have had a chance to view these images in our MarryThis! Guide to a Casual Woodsy Wedding. It’s a photo shoot I did for MarryThis! and I wanted to share it here since I have so many favorites from the shoot! Big thanks to Olivia and Brian, who came out and modeled for this guide. They have such great chemistry!

Love all these amazing fall-colored flowers from Rosemary Stafford Floral Design! She’s amazing.

Olivia modeled as a child — I can totally tell! I love how natural she is in front of the camera.

These cool tags on the welcome drinks and the table number (below) plus a huge assortment of other paper goods matching this color scheme are all available at MarryThis! in the complete printable suite, if they’re totally grabbing you!

This was such a fun shoot to work on — thanks to everyone who helped out and made it a reality! If you’d like to see the guide that it’s featured in, click here to download it free!

Jocelyn & Praket are so sweet together. She’s a little on the shy side and he’s got a charming smile. Together, they’re magic. In just two days (TWO DAYS!) Eric and I will be traveling to Ranchi, India where I’ll be photographing Jocelyn and Praket’s wedding and I could not be more excited to spend time with these guys at their amazing wedding!

We met up several weeks ago in southeast Portland and had such fun hanging out and taking some engagement photos. I love the look on Jocelyn’s face in the one below:

Jocelyn and Praket: Loved working with you guys on these photos and totally can’t wait for your amazing wedding. See you guys in India!

That title was actually a little misleading. Truth is, I’ve been booking 2012 weddings for more than a year now. I’m already HALFWAY to capacity for next summer. Lots of prime summer dates are already old news, so if you’re planning a wedding next summer and want me there to photograph it, now’s the time to get in touch so we can talk details.

I’ve got a cool new pricing guide that I’m really excited about this year — it features testimonials from clients, details about all the things I offer, like the photo booth and destination weddings, and it’s all in one neat little package.

If you e-mail me, I’ll hook you up with this little booklet in a PDF format so you can go over it and book me for your wedding if you so choose. Below, some excerpts from my all-new pricing guide!

I’ve already got a stellar lineup of amazing couples on my 2012 calendar — if you want to be one of them, I’d suggest getting on that list soon, before my dance card is totally full.

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.

For the past few months, while I’ve been photographing weddings and working on other things for Sara Gray Photography, I’ve also been working on the relaunch of MarryThis! I started MarryThis! back in March with my dear friends Amy Trang and Allison Doty Schexnayder, who I met at Washington State University during my time working for the student newspaper.

We have had an absolute blast producing original content in the form of wedding guides and now, a budget wedding planning blog! We have been launching what I’d call Version 2 of MarryThis! last week and this week, and I’m enormously proud of it.

Our blog is really fun — we’re all three blogging about all the things a budget bride needs to be able to pull it all off. We’ll also be hosting giveaways and providing inspiration along the way. Come read, add us to your RSS reader or check in when you feel like reading about weddings!

And of course, in the shop we’re now offering a new version of our wedding guides. The guide itself is totally free, and goes into loads of depth about how to pull off a stylish budget wedding for individual themes (we launch a new one each month) and we’re also offering seriously awesome printables, from customizable invitations to table numbers, thank you notes and way more.

Thanks for all your support in the past with MarryThis! — we’re excited to see where it leads and excited to have it up and running once again.

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!

Weddings are so much fun! I love watching each couple make a celebration uniquely their own, and then being there as their friends and family get to enjoy it all. Kirsten and Cody’s wedding, back in September, was so completely them. They threw a fun party that everyone had a blast at, and did it completely in their own way.

We started our day at Portland’s Peninsula Park, which is gorgeous and made a great spot for some portraits of these guys and their families.

Flowers came from Emerald Petals — they have the cutest little shop on North Mississippi Avenue!

The celebration was held at Holocene — sometimes known as a music venue, this was a perfect spot to celebrate in a little bit more modern style than most of Portland’s wedding venues.

Partygoers crowded around for Cody and Kirsten’s wedding ceremony, officiated by Cody’s twin brother Dusty.

The hula hoop contest was just one of the fun things that Kirsten & Cody treated guests to. They also got cookies for dessert, a photo booth and a BINGO game that helped them get to know each other. They really thought of everything.

Kirsten and Cody: What do I say? This was one of my most fun weddings all year. You guys were a pleasure to work with and I’m glad to call you friends! Best wishes for a long and happy marriage full of hula-hooping, family and friends.

It’s always exciting to see my work featured on wedding blogs — it’s one of my favorite things! I wanted to share a few things that have been published lately on some of my favorite blogs.

First, Sarah & Trevor’s King Estate Winery wedding was featured on The Inspired Bride on September 13 (my birthday!)

Then, a fun styled shoot I did at the beach with fellow photographer Courtney Jade as a model was published on Destination I Do‘s blog on October 6.

On September 27, this fun fall-inspired photo shoot I did with Lisa from Bloomsberry Floral appeared on Elizabeth Anne Designs.

Then on Oct. 13 (my anniversary!) Brooke and Galen’s sweet covered-bridge elopement was featured on DIY Bride. This was one of my favorite ceremonies all year.

Thanks so much to the bloggers who featured my work — it’s always such a pleasure to be on your amazing blogs! And thanks to my clients for having the most amazing weddings to share.

I have been waiting to share this wedding for awhile and so excited for you all to see it! Rosa and Chris’ Portland wedding was amazing — all glitz and glamour at the Riverplace Hotel. Rosa and I met in sixth grade, and we were good friends through middle school. We lost touch in high school and college since we went to different schools, so it was so fun to reconnect while she was planning her wedding to Chris. These two are so fun and caring, and everyone around them was so excited to be there to celebrate with them.

I’m going to open (is there any other way?) with her fabulous, fabulous Kate Spade shoes. These shoes stop my heart.

Rosa’s family are all so creative and hardworking. She had family members do all her flowers, her favors, her hair and makeup and much more. Everything turned out so beautiful.

I loved how they incorporated pops of modern orange, grey and white throughout their wedding. The color palette was so fresh and pretty.

I love that Rosa and Chris are shoe people. Chris has a thing about Nikes and collects them, so he had his groomsmen in these perfect-for-the-occasion Air Jordans.

Talk about a gorgeous wedding party!

Rosa and Chris, you guys are amazing! It was so fun to be a part of your day and to reconnect with you through your wedding process. Here’s to many happy years together, with gorgeous, rare and unique shoes on your feet!