This has been a year full of great events, both local and abroad. We’ve grown as a business, and also as people, due to all of these amazing experiences. Thank you for the support, encouragement, and trust you place in us. It’s our goal to create the most amazing and meaningful images of your big day.

We are going to be traveling over the next couple of weeks and we’ll be back in the office on January 20th. To leave you with a photo of something beautiful, here is Angkor Wat in Cambodia (photographed during last winter):

Happy holidays everybody!! We wish you a wonderful New Year’s and a great upcoming year of the Tiger!

Mike and Natasha

This website publishes the hottest TTD sessions (check out the rest of their recent posts):

I’ll start with the most important part… drum roll please… the date of the wedding is….. 9/10/10! We are inviting just 30 people to the wedding and our hopes are that these people won’t mind taking the Friday off as it will allow all of us to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing.

The venue update is next: we absolutely fell in love with both the Ranch from our last blog post and also with the cute villa. It was a tough choice and we had to make a long list of pluses and minuses of both places. At the end we decided to go with the villa! Although both places are absolutely gorgeous, we felt that this venue would be a better match for our tiny wedding.

And lastly, the part everyone has been asking about ever since we got engaged… the photographer! This was honestly the toughest choice we’ve had to make. The challenge was that we both knew what style and type of photographer we wanted and we were absolutely not willing to compromise on it. Fortunately, we wanted more or less the same thing, otherwise we’d have to hire one photographer for the bride and one for the groom :)

We started our search by looking at Bay Area photographers, then at ones in Southern California. What we found is that although there are a ton of absolutely amazing artists in this state whom we adore and even sometimes idolize, their styles were a little different than what we had in mind. So our search circle got bigger and bigger, and we started looking at East Coast and even some Canadian photographers, until we finally found someone whose work we both absolutely admire:

We first learned of Greg Gibson a few years back at one of the photography conventions we attended. I remember that even then we were amazed at his strong photojournalistic approach and constant search for ways to tell the story. We were both beyond happy when he agreed to come out to Napa for our wedding!

Next on the list is the dress shopping and I’ll let you all know how that will go. Until then, have a great week everybody and stay dry in these upcoming storms!

Natasha

As usual, we took a bunch of camera gear with us but after having lugged two big cameras around for a few days, we decided to let it go and leave them in the room. After all, what interesting photo opportunities can you find in a resort? Well, as Murphy’s law would have it, dramatic light happens as soon as you leave home without the camera. Fortunately, I always carry a little point-and-shoot with me, and all the pictures here were taken with it.

An amazing sunset we saw in Cancun:

Our Thanksgiving dinner with Turkey and tropical cocktails:

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! Have a great week :)

On the wedding day we went to the Legion of Honor for portraits and had a ton of fun there! One of the benefits of having a slightly off-season wedding is that you can pick a very popular, usually crowded, location for your photos and still be the only wedding party there. We still had a bit of time left before the ceremony started and we decided to also roam the Palace Hotel for portrait locations.

We love shooting in older San Francisco hotels with their antique benches and sofas, big lobbies, lush greenery, awesome mirrors, columns and curtains. We could literally spend hours and hours with the variety of scenes and backgrounds available.

This Palace Hotel wedding had a Chuppah ceremony held in the Sunset Court where we absolutely loved the beautifully tall domed-glass ceilings.

This hotel simply exudes luxury in every way and the reception at the charming Grand Ballroom was prepped with gorgeous details, a great band, and some colorful lighting which added great colors to the backgrounds of all the reception shots.

As a special performance, a belly dancer was invited to entertain and dazzle the audience with her abilities:

This was the last wedding of the year for Choco Studio and we are happy to have shot such a spectacular event for our season finale. We are very much looking forward to some down time, spending more time with friends, snowboarding in Tahoe, planning our own wedding, and even going to a couple of very tropical destinations :) The break in between the weddings is not for long, however, and next year’s events are starting right up again in January!

On their wedding day, the ceremony was held at the Trinity Lutheran Church and the reception took place at a San Mateo wedding venue called the Peninsula Social Club. This is a spacious and beautifully decorated venue and it was great to be photographing a local San Mateo wedding.

It was really special to see the groom’s parents share a kiss when Jen and Nino were announced to be husband and wife:

One of the many highlights of the day was when their friends brought out a classic fire engine to use for the photographs. We could have probably spent another several hours just shooting their portraits on and around this gorgeous vehicle.

The most original grand entrance ever goes to this couple:

Congratulations to you, Nino and Jen!! We wish you guys all the best.

Diana and Daniel’s big day is coming up in just one short week now and we can’t wait. For now, enjoy some of our faves from this session:

Have a great weekend everyone :)

It all started at the super fun Hotel Durant, which had lamps in a shape of smoking pipes – so Berkeley :). The preparations were a ton of fun with Mike covering the guys (fun times folding handkerchiefs, then happily drinking beer) while I was doing my best to keep with the girls running from one room to another getting ready and trying not to forget anything :)

Girls arrive at the Brazil Room:

I absolutely loved Jen’s bouquet – so simple and beautiful!

These guys had the best possible light for their ceremony – the sun just went behind the tall trees of Tilden Park. The ceremony was one of the most emotional ones I’ve ever witnessed – Jen and Jimmy were laughing and crying without being afraid to break some traditional rules of proper ceremonies. This made the ceremony so personal, so them, that all the guests (as well as both photographers) were laughing and crying with them:

It became dark shortly after the ceremony and most of the portraits, family pictures, and bride and groom shots had to be taken in pretty much complete darkness. It didn’t prevent anybody from having fun, however :)

One thing that I didn’t mention yet is that besides it being pitch black it got to be really, really cold! And cold as I was wearing my down jacket by the time of the portraits, Jen was a real trooper in her strapless dress and didn’t even complain once!

Jen’s sister made an awesome toast and I love all the emotion in this picture:

Congratulations Jen and Jimmy! Hope you’re having an awesome time in Hawaii!!!

Natasha

The ceremony took place at the gorgeous Mission Dolores in San Francisco and their grand reception was at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame. The reception was filled with so many performances and so much dancing through the night that it felt like we were at a music concert. Some favorites from their day:

There was much celebrating even before the ceremony at Mission Dolores:

This church is spectacular:

We loved witnessing this series at the start of the ceremony:

Shadieh and George were riding in style on this day:

The Hyatt Burlingame wedding reception looked amazing:

Watching the performances was fascinating:

Airborne groom!

It was AWESOME to see our past clients Angelica and Yuriy! Shadieh was Angelica’s maid-of-honor and this time Angelica was the matron of honor:

Congratulations to Shadieh and George!! We loved being with you on this important day. Thank you for inviting us to capture it for you.