Wedding, engagement, family photography, child and senior portraits – Bakersfield and Kern County

This year we decided to do something fun!

We put out a special offer to give away a wedding to one awesome couple getting married next year.  We narrowed it down and we have finally made our decision!!!  (It’s not easy, you know, and we were having too much fun yesterday celebrating our 8th anniversary to put this post together.)

At the last minute -on our last day we were accepting applications for the giveaway we got an application.  I read it out-loud to Rhiannon and it made us both laugh.  It was a delightful read!  We love to work with fun, funny and romantic couples and we feel confident we found just such a couple!

So with no further delays:

CONGRATULATIONS

LORENZO & SARA!!!

Lorenzo & Sara will be getting married on April, 10, 2011 at the Padre Hotel in Downtown Bakersfield.  Lorenzo is an emergency dispatcher for the Sequoia Nation Forest and Sara is a student majoring in Human Biology at UCSD (where Rhiannon and I graduated from!!! -you know she got brownie points for that!).  They met at South High in Bakersfield during their freshman year, but didn’t start to date until the met-up again after going separate ways after graduating high school.  They both attended a a mutual friend’s band concert at Jerry’s Pizza and well, they are getting married now in just a few months!!!

Their application was quite fun to read.  We want to share a few excerpts with you:

We asked: If you win this giveaway, what will you do with the savings it will bring?

They answered: SNOW-CONE MACHINE!  [We had a great laugh with that one!] As much as we would enjoy some ice cold slushy goodness, our pragmatic adult responsibility would kick in and we would choose to either invite more of the expansive hispanic family or take our honeymoon outside the states. As a starting couple, we realize we have a lot of new hurdles (and bills) in the way, and all the help we could get on the way would really help.

We asked: Anything you want us to know about the two of you that you think would win us over?

They answered: As much as would like to say I walk little old ladies across the street and Sara runs into burning buildings to save babies, we don’t do those things yet we really try to work hard for our families and ourselves. Despite my (Lorenzo) big nose, we really are a cute and honest couple and we find it hard to toot our own horn. However Sara is currently a student at UCSD (toot toot!) majoring in Human Biology. Check out our facebook and drop us a line. We don’t bite (well Sara does but it isn’t too hard). [Lorenzo, we'll take-your-word for-it -if Sara promises not to bite us we'll promise not to pull out the wide angle lenses for any closeups on your nose!]

We asked: How did you get engaged?

They answered: The story about our engagement is a little lengthy and starts at the foundation of our relationship. Months into the relationship, I (Lorenzo) was finding out pretty fast how important Sara would be in my life and I wanted to show her how I felt. So I started a project, I found a greeting card about hamsters and how their lives were like ours. Taking that card I changed it to read guinea pigs instead. A quick sidebar, at this time Sara was a proud mother of three guinea pigs. One time Sharky the pig escaped. She promptly got scared and found a spot deep behind the refrigerator to hide. The only way to retrieve her was to lure her out with a carrot. Sharky took the bait and grabbed that carrot like it was the most important thing ever created. Like she often does, Sara documented the event and took pictures of the failed escape and carrot clutching. Getting back to the card, I got this picture of Sharky and put it inside with text above it saying, “If I were a guinea pig I would hold onto you like a carrot.” Sara would tell me years later, that this gesture proved to her that we could be a serious couple and was the start of our falling in love. Also this moment sparked me using Carrot as a pet name for Sara.
When I was to propose to Sara, I wanted to remind her of this beginning. In the midst of our first hot air balloon ride over the Pacific Ocean at sunset, I gave her the same card I gave her all those years ago. (Thank you Hallmark on Stockdale Ave)  Instead of the picture of Sharky on the inside of the card, I had a picture of myself with a toy carrot in my mouth. The caption read, “If I were a guinea pig, I would hold on to my Carrot. For always.” At that point I gave her a hand made sliver carrot ring. She immediately said yes, and that’s the story of this Guinea Pig and his Carrot. [What a great story!  Very sweet.  I expect there will be a carrot theme in some of their engagement and wedding photos!]

Lorenzo and Sara, we are very excited to work with you two and to be a part of your big day!!!  Now let’s plan a day for the engagement session!

-Alex & Rhiannon