Ed’s step mom booked us a few weeks ago and we didn’t get to meet Jenn and Ed till their second wedding day. They asked me to pick a place close to Testa’s to do pictures before the reception and I’ve been waiting for a reason to go back to Rogers Orchards with a bride and groom.

When Jenn and Ed stepped out of their car I was psyched. They both looked so awesome. After firing out all the family pictures it was time to make some great images using the awesome landscape of rows and rows of bare apple trees.

There is no better feeling to have as you head into the reception than knowing you made some awesome images early in the day. We knew we were only going to be at the reception for a couple of hours so we planned it so we would be there to capture as much as possible.

I’ve seen couple be introduced to all sorts of songs but this was the first time that song was by Pantera! The following events went from sweet to crazy, to cake smashing back to sweet. Ed had a really nice dance with his daughter followed by a wrestling match with his son and we finished out our time shooting Jenn and Ed smashing huge handfuls of cake into each others faces. The final sweetness was a cake covered kiss and hug before heading off to the bathroom to scrape the cake out of their eyes.

Congratulations Jenn and Ed!
Photography By: Matt Branscombe and Mike Ciarleglio
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We walked across the street to do their fist look in front of the Society Room and then off to City Hall for my first time shooting there. What a great location.

There was a beautiful candle lit ceremony at the Society Room. This was the best I’ve ever seen the place look. Hundreds of candles, some really cool decorations (care of Michelle Neff) and the tables, settings, flowers and linens were amazing. This was a themed wedding that really came together with the details.

Jess and Eric are such a great couple and I’m really happy they chose to have us be part of their wedding.

Photography By: Matt Branscombe and Mike Ciarleglio
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Special thanks to my friend, photographer and part timer at BSC, Arek Lamorski for being a great assistant.
Photography by: Matt Branscombe
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Photograph By: Arek Lamorski

Noel and her father walked down the staircase to the sounds of a bagpipe player standing on the veranda. The ceremony was lovely and lighthearted.

Noel and many of her friends are ballet dancers so I knew when it came to the reception this would be one of those wedding where we come home with a ton of awesome dancing pictures. Apparently Noel and her friend Joe regularly “dance battle”. Noel had a dance battle skit planned (not to the knowledge of Joe). The DJ announced the dance battle as Joe and Noel stood at opposite ends of the dance floor. Many of the guests lined the veranda cheering from overhead while Noel stood staring at Joe from across the dance floor. At the point just before the battle was to start the DJ announced that Noel had been hurt and that her understudy Brenden (a professional dancer) would be taking her place. From across the dance floor Joe screams “That’s not fair, he’s got skills!”

The dance battle commenced. What ensued was a combination of spastic white-boy break dancing and close quarter gyrating with a pseudo sexual undertone.

The rest of the night was filled with cake cuttings, photo booths and dancing.

Congratulations Noel + Jim!

Photography by: Matt Branscombe and Mike Ciarleglio
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Remember that dance off I told you about… I could have posted 50 images from this 5 minutes.

Sunday morning we woke up to a beautiful, warm, sunny day. After leaving the hotel we headed over to City Hall a few minutes a head of everyone else to get ready for the First Look. To my disappointment City Hall was locked. I went around to all doors and no one was there. Under most circumstances I would have been really mad but it was so nice out I think it would have been a waste to shoot inside.

After walking around shooting formals at various locations in the vicinity of City Hall we went back just to grab a quick shot of Heather and Josh pounding on the doors. While shooting into the sun on the steps of the Wadsworth Museum we noticed everyone’s faces were lit with a really warm golden glow. I turned around to see Hartford’s “Gold Building” reflecting a bright mid day sun directly onto the steps. Mother nature and the architects of Neuhaus & Taylor provided us with a nice “two light setup” for Heather + Josh’s bridal party pictures.

After all the fun we headed over to The Society Room for a beautiful ceremony performed by Justice of The Peace Mary Coburn followed by a beautiful Black & White themed reception.

Congratulations Heather + Josh!

Photography By: Matt Branscombe and Mike Ciarleglio
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We drove almost 2 hours to Lakeville, CT. to the Interlaken Inn. We arrived just in time to catch some images of the incredible makeup artists Stephanie Loulakis-Moore from Larissa Lake finishing up the bridal party. That gave us just enough time to take the rings, dress and shoes outside to make some creative images. I love the rustic feel of The Interlaken Inn and the snowflake theme of the wedding details.

As soon as Katie was dress we hopped in my car and drove up the road to where Mike had been waiting patiently in the cold for almost 30 minutes to get his “First Look” at his soon-to-be bride. As Katie walked up behind Mike I could see his smile get bigger and bigger as the clunks of her heals got louder and louder until she was right beside him. For the next 10 minutes there was more smiling, laughing and kissing than you could imagine.

We took Katie, Mike and the bridal party down to the lake across the street to do some pictures. Though most of us were freezing, everyone sucked it up and helped make some amazing bridal party pictures. The lake side Birch trees made the perfect location for pictures. As we packed up the car to go back to The Interlaken Inn for the ceremony Katie and Mike stared walking up the road and Mike C. made (in my opinion) the best picture of the day as he laid in a ditch on the side of the road waiting for the perfect moment when all things fell into place.

Katie and Mike wrote a really amazing and funny introduction which the JP read at the beginning of the ceremony. I only remember parts of it but the gist was she read a list of ingredients that made their relationship as if it were a cake recipe (referring to the fact that Katie made her own wedding cake). The line that sticks in my head was “two fists full of Husky fur”, Love it!

The tent and dance floor were lit up by the always amazing stylings of AMS and the details from the cake, to the place cards and the signature blue martinis with sugar snowflakes were all amazing. Near the end of the night Katie came running over to me to tell me that it was snowing and that she wanted to get a few shots in the snow. What could make a snowflake themed wedding more complete than snow? On a day that started off warm (relatively) and sunny we had about 10 minutes of heavy snow and it stopped. In my opinion that is a good sign for Katie and Mike.

Congratulations!

Photography by: Matt Branscombe and Mike Ciarleglio
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There are so many different cool spots at Worthington I try to switch it up each time. Yesterday we photographed Sarah and Tyler at the Maple Syrup building, the front barn and the Worming House.

Thanks to the owner of Worthington, Dan Roulier and his two dogs we are given the royal treatment every time we shoot there. And thanks to mother nature for holding off the rain till literally the second we started the car to drive away.

Photography by Matt Branscombe and Mike Ciarleglio
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Last year we managed to pull of HP with only 3 weeks of planning and though we all did a great thing that day things didn’t go very smoothly. This year with many months to plan and some of the most amazing volunteers (You know who you are) we had what could only be described and a 100% successful event. The biggest hurdle we had to overcome was the file handling, editing and printing. Thanks to all who participated in our auction we had a budget to get 2 amazing photo printers which will make every Hep-Portrait from this year forward so much better. We had two volunteers on laptops taking flash cards from the photographers, renaming the files and pushing them to an editor. Thanks to Monte Rudze we had the 2 laptops networked to 4 iMacs connected to the two photo printers. This process was so streamlined that people didn’t have to wait more than 20 minutes for their edited and touched up 8×10 print to be delivered.

We had an amazing team a hair stylists and makeup artists giving ladies the “Royal Treatment” and an outstanding team of 25 photographers working in 6 stations making some of the best portraits you’ve ever seen! Let’s not forget about all the general volunteers who were the backbone of the logistics.

The attendees may have only been able to walk out with one 8×10 that day but there were so many great images made that it would be a shame for those people to not have them as well. Since Dec. 10th I’ve been editing all the rest of the pictures taken in order to deliver the digital files to those attendees who’ve contacted us.

One more time I want to personally thank all the great people who put in so much time to help make a difference in the community.

The final tally for Help-Portrat New Haven 2011
Pictures taken: 4,183
People Photographed: 282
Prints Delivered: 121
Gallons of Hot Chicken Soup: 4
Pizzas: 21
Memories made: Too many to count.

For more information about Help-Portrait New Haven go to www.help-portraitnewhaven.com

To find out more about Help-Portrait or find one in your area go to
www.Help-Portrait.com

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Photography By: Matt Branscombe
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