Nostalgia Corner

There was/is a chocolate bar called Topic, whose ad jingle went, "What has a hazelnut in every bite?"

"Squirrel shit!" we'd shout back at the TV.

Photography Giveaway from Love Life Images!

Love Life Images is the studio collaboration of photographer Jennifer Domenick and her talented associates. I'm so excited to announce that they are giving away a free photography package to one lucky couple. Here's what the prize includes:

* Two photographers
* 8 hours of coverage at your event
* Engagement session
* 'Snapshot Studio' at your event
* Online images at Pictage
* 4x6 proofs of your images

You must be planning a 2008 DC-area wedding to qualify. Here's how to enter. In their words, email them a "true story-telling image of the love of your life. We're photojournalists and we want to see how you see your true love. NO 'SAY CHEESE'-TYPE IMAGES. We want a picture that speaks to us. Tell us a little story about this person, why he/she is the love of your life."

Here are some of my favorite images from their website and blog:Check out their blog for more information on the contest and also to view their beautiful work. Good luck!

R&R Catering Open House

We were recently invited to an open house hosted by R&R Catering at the Briar Patch B&B in Middleburg, VA. I had visited the Briar Patch over the summer immediately after they opened their new reception facility but this time they had really finished it off. It's beautiful!

Of course R&R did a great job with the food and service as always...if you're looking for a high-quality and reasonably-priced caterer, we always recommend R&R. All of their salespeople are fabulous but we especially love Laura E., Laura R., Dianna, Natalie, Anne, and Megan (tell them we sent you). Here are some photos from the one and only Kate Triano:The front foyer at Briar Patch. This is perfect for cocktail hours or an indoor ceremony back-up plan (they have fantastic outdoor space):
The reception room complete with high ceilings, tone pillars, and crystal chandeliers:Another view of the room, showing the pretty fireplace:
Who doesn't love rock candy sticks on a coffee bar? This reminds me of the tea/lemonade station at my wedding!R&R is hosting another free tasting event on Wednesday, February 13th at Foxchase Manor in Manassas. Check out their website for more info and be sure to RSVP. While you're at it, check out more photos of this event on Kate's blog!

Parisian chic!

This is my Venetian Inpired Jacket with a romantic Pairisian inspired twist, with lots of vintage ivory and black lace accents! This is slowly becoming one of the most popular items in my etsy store and I should have many to show you guys in the coming months! so stay tuned. ;)

$50 at Reston Limousine

Remember a few months ago when we had a $50 gift card to Reston Limousine? We got another one! Want it?Post a comment here by Friday at 8pm and we'll pick a random winner! Don't forget to include your email address so we can find you. Good luck!

UPDATE 2/1: Congratulations, eastportbride!

Real Simple Winner!

Two weeks ago we gushed about the Real Simple Weddings magazine and offered an extra copy we picked up. Last week we extended the contest and there were only 7 of you that wanted it!

Congratulations goes to Miss Preppy Fashionista at A Saratoga Wedding who is planning her New York wedding for this year (on my birthday!). We're so excited to send this one your way and hope you enjoy it!

Venue Spotlight: Queenstown Harbor River House

Finding a venue for Lindsay and Sam was a challenge. They wanted enough space for up to 250-300 guests, no hotel ballrooms or otherwise 'blah' spaces, a private site without having to worry about other wedding guests or wedding crashers, driving distance to Washington, DC, affordable, and oh yeah - a water view! Thinking about DC event spaces, there are very few with water views (Ft. Belvoir Officer's Club, Top of the Town, the Odyssey or Nina's Dandy dinner boats, and the Key Bridge Marriott are a few). None of these are extremely glamorous nor will hold enough guests. Also since the city is built along the river, there's not much seclusion offered.

Enter Queenstown Harbor Golf Club and their beautiful historic River House! Lindsay actually found this one on her own but I'm glad she shared it with me. This venue is located on the eastern shore of Maryland past Annapolis, the Bay Bridge, and Kent Island. While it's a bit of a hike from DC (about 45-60 minutes out Rt. 50), there are plenty of hotels nearby and also lodging on site at the house!

Their website isn't entirely helpful but hopefully this will give you an idea. Without further ado, a photo tour.

Guests will park their cars at the main clubhouse then be transported by shuttle bus to the River House. This is the front of the house:Inside we have a few sitting areas on the main floor. The furniture's not amazing but it's in decent shape and is perfect for a kids play area, catering staging, or even to hold the groom and his guys before the ceremony. These rooms all have doors, too, which can be closed if you don't like the decor:Upstairs there are at least 3 bedrooms. The River House can sleep up to 10 people!There are a few modest restrooms but for a larger party you'll need to rent a portable restroom trailer:The central hallway goes from the front to the back of the house:Here's the stunning back yard. This is where's we'll set the ceremony and reception tent:There's even a little patio - perfect to set a bar on for cocktail hour:We're so excited to work with Lindsay and Sam on their wedding coming this September. Of course we'll post photos after the big day! Special thanks to SoireeInternMelissa for these fabulous shots of Queenstown.

Washington Bridal Showcase TODAY!

What are you doing between the hours of 11am and 5pm today? If you answered "going to the bridal show" then you have answered correctly!

Join us at the Washington Bridal Showcase today at the Dulles Expo Center. We're booth 309 and my brother's company, Red Feather Video, is booth 310. Come say hello, eat tons of wedding cake, and get a tuxedo coupon (oh, and tons of other things. those are just the highlights).

For tips & tricks on how to make the most of your day, check out our blog post from last year's show.

Venue Spotlight: Famoso Restaurant & M Cafe

A few weeks ago I was treated to a fantastic lunch by the lovely Megan Showers at Famoso Restaurant and M Cafe in Chevy Chase, MD. She's one of the nicest venue event managers I know!

The lower level has a restaurant called M Cafe. It's a modern space and is very busy during the lunch hours. They can fit about 150 people standing in this space and 80 seated for a full meal:The entire front of the restaurant is full of sunny windows. On the lower level they have outdoor seating during nicer months and open up the windows to create an indoor/outdoor space. Upstairs the windows lend beautiful natural light to an otherwise more romantic space. Unfortunately it makes my photos look like crap but you get the idea.

Upstairs is Famoso Restaurant, a darker and more sophisticated Italian restaurant. They have capacity for 200 standing or 90 seated:There is a smaller private room called the wine room (guess what they store there?). This one would be great for a shower, bridesmaids luncheon, or even a post-wedding brunch. They can seat 35 in this room:Famoso's has this cool horseshoe/oval-shaped bar:This one hurts my eyes a little but shows the neat lounge furniture they have. They can move these pieces anywhere in either restaurant and really set up a funky club atmosphere for you:I love the space at Famoso's and M Cafe and cannot tell you how amazing the food was. If you're looking for a venue for your wedding reception or rehearsal dinner, look no further!

The Living Dead at the Manchester Festival

One of the most heroic spectacles I ever witnessed on a public stage was that of Stephen Laws conducting an interview with Jorge Grau about his life and films. That's Jorge Grau, director of the cannibal zombie classic The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue... kind of apposite because this was at the annual Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester, where the two of us helped out with the presentation work for more years than I care to count.


Grau spoke only Spanish. The responsible committee member (you know who you are, Gil) had promised an interpreter but neglected to arrange one. Italian director Antonio Margheriti, being interviewed elsewhere on the programme, spoke a little English and a little Spanish and was drafted in to help out.

Steve had to make himself understood to Margheriti, which in itself was no easy task; Margheriti then had to find a way to put over to Grau what he thought Steve had asked. Grau would shake his head, mystified, and everyone would try again. When Grau was finally able to get a handle on some version of the original question, his reply would start the long, long journey back.

Thirty minutes of this, and then someone appeared with a charming young woman and man that they'd hauled from a nearby Spanish restaurant. I think he was Spanish with some English, and she English with some Spanish... anyway, something like that. But they knew absolutely nothing about films. They joined the three onstage and from that point onward, all five of them were at it.

But here's the thing... by the end of the hour, Laws had succeeded in getting an interview out of Grau. Lesser men would have been carried off gibbering about ten minutes in.

The Festival paid the expenses of every guest and presented each with a statuette that was the most gorgeous thing of its kind I've ever seen; it was the robot Maria from Metropolis, perfectly sculpted and cast in pewter.

Every year Laws and I would present these at the end of each onstage interview (on one memorable occasion, the box was slid within reach as the interview ended... Laws gave it the big presentation speech buildup, and opened the box with a flourish to reveal... nothing), and then we'd pay our own hotel bills and go home.

We ached as we watched these objects of desire being carried off... mostly by the deserving (Freddie Francis, Jimmy Sangster, Val Guest, Janina Faye, Brian Clemens, Tony Tenser, Barbara Shelley, Hazel Court) but also by any old walk-on one-movie starlet or day player they'd managed to involve.

I always lusted after one of those Marias... but Laws genuinely deserved one.

Is it just me?

A theatre not too far from where I live - it would be mean of me to name it - sends out a quarterly newsletter which includes a regular ad for pre-show dining at a nearby restaurant.

The ad always includes this proud image:


Now, I know there's an art to photographing food in a way that makes it appetising. In fact I once spent an afternoon discussing the subject with a London photographer who did exactly that for a living.

I don't know if it's just me...

But I think that if you want to bring in the diners, a dish that looks like genitalia modelled out of bowel movements probably isn't the way to go.

Black Couture Bolero

This is the latest custom piece for a fab customer of mine on etsy, buffyleigh.

I love how deconstructed the finish of the piece is. It has a fab texturised surface quality ,which is quite difficult to capture on camera too! The neck on this is so dramatic too! (I just love neck action!) lol

I have added embellishments all over this piece in random sections, featuring, antique lace, vintage buttons (courtesy of my antique shop fiend pal Ruby) , metal (for steampunk love) and stones with some ebroidery too! all in all a piece that im very excited about!

Soundscapes and Wide Screens

In a Blog post responding to Lost, In Transition, Carlo C draws attention to something that I hadn't been aware of before; that in the Lost soundtrack, in addition to the forest whispers sometimes heard by the characters, there's also 'hidden audio' that carries a certain amount of story freight. Or maybe the illusion of it. Only time will tell.

I'd never really registered the presence of any hidden audio - but then I'm used to sound being the least-considered element of TV drama. You almost never hear a 5.1 mix that makes effective use of the rear speakers, for example. There's a common industry argument that it's pointless to add an element that many people won't get.

About ten years ago, very few people had widescreen TVs and even fewer were able to receive anamorphic widescreen broadcasts - it seems like another age now, but those first-generation sets were analogue-only. The only way to get a widescreen image was to zoom on a letterboxed picture.

I can recall a demo that ran for ages in the basement of the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street; it was a widescreen set showing a zoomed VHS of Star Wars, and it looked appalling.

(I don't know about anybody else who passed through there, but it seriously dampened my enthusiasm for any upgrade. And let me tell you, I'd been waiting for widescreen TV ever since I'd seen it prefigured in Kubrick's 2001. In fact, 2001 was the movie I'd promised myself for the first screening when I got one.)

Anyway, my point is that at that time, despite the entire industry being on-track for widescreen broadcasting, the commissioning/scheduling end of the business was very leery of it. The result was that, for a year or two around '98-99, a large amount of stuff was ordered and shown in a compromised 14:9 format that managed to irritate everyone equally.

(4:3 is the old-style 'square' TV screen. 16:9 is the standard for widescreen TV. There's been no such single standard in the history of the movies, so theatrical films still have to be cropped or letterboxed to fit your TV screen. The 14:9 compromise gave a picture which fitted neither shape; it displayed with black bands above and below the picture on 'normal' TVs, and to either side of the picture on widescreen TVs.)

This was the time when I was shooting Oktober for ITV. We shot it on Super-16 in 16:9 widescreen, but ITV decreed that the broadcast master be a 14:9 telecine transfer on digital tape. We took the opportunity to make a 16:9 transfer while we had the negative in the telecine suite, but that went into a cupboard at Carnival and hasn't been screened since.

(There was never a physical positive print; all the editing was done offline on digitised rushes and when the picture cut was complete, the camera negative was cut to conform. The assembled negative was then scanned and electronically reversed to give the positive image - so no generational loss, and no added grain.)

So what I'm saying is that a lot of quite recent material was made in a form that limits its potential for exploitation now. Much as viewers used to complain about letterboxed movies, they now turn away from anything that doesn't fill the 16:9 screen. So even the oldest archive material gets zoomed to fit, and invariably looks cramped and odd.

As far back as the 50s, Richard Greene was arguing that ITV's 35mm Adventures of Robin Hood should have been shooting in colour. His argument was that it would be an asset for years to come. At the time, it was deemed to make no economic sense.

But, as we should have learned by now, times do change.

Real Simple Weddings Giveaway....Extended!

I'll be traveling over the next week so I've decided to postpone the 'enter by' date for our Real Simple Weddings Giveaway. Be sure to comment on that post for your chance to win! I'll be picking a lovely winner by Monday, January 28th. Good luck!

Capital Decor and Events

Last week we checked out Capital Decor and Events! This company's based in Beltsville, MD and has a wonderful office where they build floral decor, props, tables, or anything else you could want for an event. Meredith gladly showed me around their space and introduced me to their supber-fab staff.

To give you a quick idea of what they do, here are photos from their website:Without further ado, a photo tour...

Here is their consultation room, where they woo potential clients with pretty photos of events and talk business:A glimpse at their back warehouse. Here are a ton of floral vases:This entire wall is just crates upon crates of votive candle holders:These adorable bead-encrusted votive holders would be perfect for a glam wedding:This 8' tall structure holds escort cards! What a creative way to display your cards instead of the standard rectangular table. They can customize it with any color ribbon:These martini glasses reminded me of the ones at the Windows party:Colorful bistro-style garden chairs:Their woodshop is expansive and allows them to create custom pieces:I had so much fun with Meredith at their shop and am looking forward to working with them! Give them a call to set an appointment and take a tour...you'll really be amazed at the decor they can pull together for your wedding or special event.