Wedding Gown Fitting

A couple of days ago I posted about my sister's "engagement" photos here...yesterday she had her first bridal gown appointment to go to - how exciting!!  Of course I brought along my camera. :)  The experience was pretty fun - it was neat to see her get all dressed up.

Something I did learn, perhaps helpful to other brides out there - my sister went into the store with ideas and pictures of exactly how she wanted her dress to look and exactly how she didn't want her dress to look.  Well after she tried on dresses in line with what she had in her head - she realized that maybe they weren't the best look for her specifically and then tried on dresses with everything she said she didn't want and ended up loving it!  Go figure. :)  Finding something that fits your body type specifically is a lot different than looking at all the models in the magazines in wedding gowns.  :)  I can't wait till the day that I get to go try gowns on!! :) :)

This was the first of many appointments to come - this store didn't have a huge selection and although she was able to narrow down the look and shape of what she wanted, they didn't necessarily have the right fabrics and combinations that she wanted.  She did add one gown and veil to her "wish list", but I'm guessing she'll find something else she likes better down the line. :)

 

I've decided against posting any of the actual gown photos right now to keep the element of surprise for the groom at least.  But here's a few of the other pics from the fitting anyhow. :)

Art in the Streets

Adventures of my point-and-shoot camera
(perhaps I'll do a few more like this sometime) 

I originally heard about the awesome Art in the Streets exhibit from a fellow photographer friend who went to see it a couple months ago - he came back with some really neat pics and so I had been curious about checking it out since then.  While the topic can be a bit controversial, you can't deny the art of it.

Then this past Sunday I saw a tweet about the Art in the Streets exhibit being free on Mondays!  Well golly gee, looks like that's what my son and I were going to do that Monday.  I decided we'd take the bus down to downtown L.A. as well just for the heck of it, save some gas and parking $$.  Turns out the L.A. buses can get pretty expensive anyways, so I think I pretty much just saved on parking money...oh well.

We took the bus to the MOCA museum which is where the exhibit is advertised at...turns out there's actually 2 locations for "MOCA" - the other one is called "The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA"....I had no idea there were 2 different spots, and of course we ended up at the wrong one.  Turns out I wasn't the only one though, several people ended up at the wrong place so I didn't feel too bad.

The Geffen was about 10 blocks away, so we walked it.  It ended up being right next to Little Tokyo of L.A. as well which I had been dying to go see forever now and the stars just never aligned.  So before we went into the museum, we walked around Little Tokyo and just window shopped for a few minutes.  Such a cute little area - reminded me of San Francisco's Japantown, but smaller.   Lots of little restaurants and sushi shops, a cute little bakery, of course some Sanrio stores and a massive comic book shop.  We didn't stay long, just passed through - I'll come back another time and check the area out in a little more depth.

We headed back towards the museum and walked right in.  We were greeted by a huge warehouse setup with large scale paintings everywhere you looked.  Most things were bright and colorful as street art often is, but the first big paintings were a bit out of the ordinary - a dead rabbit and a long painting of some kind of dead animal with doors that you could swing back and forth to see the internal organs drawn.....yea, a bit strange, but Caydan had fun swinging the doors back and forth, lol.

I only brought my point and shoot camera with me as I didn't feel like lugging my big camera around on the bus.  I also had the impression that I would have just been taking pictures of pictures so didn't see a huge point in bringing it, but it turns out there was actually a lot of 3-dimensional art to take photos of - bummer for me cause I could have gotten some really neat pics if I had my fancy schmancy camera.  Oh well - my point and shoot was gonna have to do.  They're a bit blurry as you're not allowed to use flash and my little point and shoot isn't so wonderful at low lighting.  And they're not the greatest pics as I wasn't really expecting to share them - but then decided I wanted to after the fact.

Here's a few of the neat things I saw.  I definitely recommend checking out the exhibit.  Great if you like art, street art, or just to see new things.  My 5 year old son even said he had fun (there were some neat glow in the dark exhibits and monster looking figures that he loved).

Michelle and Isaac

So about 2 months ago, some may recall that I vacationed in the gorgeous state of Florida for 3 weeks...well it turns out that while I was gone, I happened to miss a LOT going on back home.  For instance, my 20 year old sister and her boyfriend decided to head off to Las Vegas with my mom and get engaged and then married!  I didn't find out about it until I got back from Florida...wow, was that a shocker.

I will say though, that I absolutely adore my sister's boyfriend HUSBAND, my now brother-in-law, and that if she was gonna go off and get married without telling anyone, I'm glad it was with him.

They're planning a ceremony/mini-wedding for March 2012 so that friends and family can actually be there and celebrate with them.  So while they've already tied the knot and skipped the engagement stage pretty much, we decided to do some engagement-style photos for the them so that they could still have the photos and use them for the invites or save the dates or whatever they want.

We planned to go down to the Santa Monica Pier to do their photos as it has a bit of sentimental value for them, but as the weekend we were going to do them turned out to be the "Carmageddon" weekend, we got scared off thinking about driving to the 10 fwy to go to Santa Monica which is where the 405 shut-down actually began (turns out the freeway really wasn't that bad after all). 

So instead I suggested we take the Metro train to downtown L.A. and do some pictures there since I've been dying to go there and take photos forever now.  We'll still go to Santa Monica soon and do pics there too, but for now we have these photos.

Here's a few highlights from our long day of walking around the downtown area and hopping on and off the train.    There was more I wanted to photograph, but bellies were getting hungry and patience was running thin, so we called it a day. :)

Birthday fun!

I went to a super fun birthday/slumber party this past weekend for a friend of mine...yes, I said "Slumber Party"!  You know you're jealous. :) :)

I snapped the below pics just for fun, but decided that I liked them enough to post here.  Unfortunately for everyone not in attendance, I didn't take pictures of the most entertaining parts of the night - let's just say there was some more alcohol, party games, stick-on mustaches, deep dark secrets, and a swimming pool.  What a great party. :) :)