I’m up here to visit my favorite (and only!) cousins on my moms side, but between visiting time they are graciously driving me all over town to see everything, and so far I’ve seen: the ice road (SO cool); a man dogsledding; a man kite skiing (FYI i saw all of that while driving on the ice road); a FOX and the highest point in the city (pretty but not overly impressive if you’re from Vancouver). They also took me on a snow mobile ride across a frozen lake where we tobogganed and made a fire (I contributed one piece of cardboard to that fire). I am having the best time! Last thing on my list is to see the northern lights but so far no dice…

I have learned a couple of very important things while up here in the north and I feel I should share them just in case any of you decide to visit one day:

1. You can’t just quickly run outside in your normal clothes- you might die.

2. Bring a real camera not an iPhone because if you leave your mittens off for more than a few seconds your hands will hurt like never before and will probably lose them.

3. Most of the time it looks like dusk or night. Enjoy day while you can.

4. Don’t try and be fashionable when you go outside- don’t leave your parka open a little so your scarf looks cooler or insist on not wearing a touque so you don’t mess up your hair. Trust me just DON’T.

5. Coke in a can outside turns to slush and then ice AND your tongue gets stuck to the can.

And finally:
6. Marshmallows taste different when roasted and eaten in the cold. They taste better!

Here are a few instagrams from the trip…

-Erin

We’ve finished up shoots until new years so we just wanted to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! If you don’t already know, Erin and I are complete Christmas nuts! We love every part of it. We love the crowds, the hot chocolate, the food, the lights, the movies, the time with family… but most of all, we love celebrating the true meaning of Christmas.

We hope you have a very Merry Christmas! We’ll be back with some new posts and new films after the holidays.

Earlier this year we wanted to make the leap to a completely custom designed site so we asked the brilliant Heather Hastings – extreme graphic designer (I added the extreme) – to puh-lease help us! We were super vague with our instructions to Heather, but super specific with what we wanted in our heads so we said “Heather, please make our branding and website better reflect who we are and what we’re all about. Thank you.” and BAM! She did! And its PERFECT!

(Fun Fact: Heather Hastings also happens to be a super close friend of ours AND she recently got engaged to our other super close friend! YAAAY friend wedding!)

So click around! Explore this place! We’d love some feedback so feel free to give us a shout out in a comment, on Facebook or Twitter, OR shout it out in person if you see us! (please shout nicely though… don’t yell… )

Special shout out to the always incredible Jamie Delaine for her amazing photo skills. All the photos of us on the site are by her :)

Special thanks to the brilliant Mark Kimmel, for coding the site!

Two days before we left for California we shot a really cool wedding in Vancouver – Alice and Tristan’s.

My first time meeting Alice was on her wedding day during her hair and makeup and I learned a lot about her in that time:
1) She is super hilarious but you really have to listen because her tone NEVER changes (which makes it all ten times more funny);
2) She doesn’t like makeup; but
3) She LOVES pandas!
I laughed like crazy when she asked her make up artist to do a more dramatic smokey-eye so she could look like a panda! At first I thought I had misheard her cause she said it so matter-of-factly but I misheard nothing- that was her request! And it looked great!

Alice and Tristan got married in the Celebration Pavilion at Queen Elizabeth Park. It was perfectly clear but FREEZING! (Obviously you can’t see the temperature in the film so I thought I would fill you in on that little tidbit). About 50 guests and it was so sweet! Their reception followed at Season’s in the Park. The food was great, the speeches were funny and the couple gave their guests a giant bag of favours each! What more can you ask for? SOLID wedding. My favourite part was the chalk speech bubbles the couple had for guests to take photo’s with – so creative!

Congratulations Tristan and Alice – your wedding was so beautiful and we had such a fun time! We wish you the best as you begin your new life together back up in the interior!

It’s crazy to me that it’s almost august. Especially since the summer weather has barely been showing it’s face lately. It really doesn’t feel like summer at all to me. Erin and I have been escaping to Cultus lake as often as we can and the weather has been so dreary! Oh well. I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna pick up and we’re gonna have 100 days of sun.

Over the next month we’ll be doing a lot of travelling, so many updates will be from the road. If you’d like, you can follow me on twitter or our official twitter account. I’ve been on Erin’s case lately to get on this twitter train and she’s starting to think about it… maybe you guys can help me out by leaving some comments telling her to get on it.

In the next couple days we’ll be posting a highlights film from a couple weeks ago. It’s really great and we can’t wait to share. Anywho… I’m starting to ramble.

Oh Cultus… how I love thee.

PS if you haven’t listened to Bon Iver’s new album… well… you should.

Early wednesday morning we headed out with my sister and brother in law. Driving from Surrey to Red Deer is about an 11 hour drive so needless to say we had to find ways to entertain ourselves while on the road. For me, one of those ways was by taking a few snapshots and shooting some video. You can view a little brief video along with a ‘techy stuff’ blurb at the bottom of the post. We made a few stops along the way and one of them was to Lake Louis. We really wanted to see this gorgeous lake, but also my bro-in-law Steve and I really wanted to watch the Stanley Cup Final and we knew we had some family staying at the Fairmont Hotel. So we crashed there room and watched the game. After the disappointing game we got back on the road.
I’ve known Drew my whole life. Besides being cousins, we’ve been extremely close friends and even roommates. I’m the youngest and he is the third youngest out of our huge batch of cousins so naturally we were pretty close growing up. We have always been in to the same music and are even in a band together. It’s rare that Erin and I get to attend weddings, let alone one of us be in the bridal party. We had so much fun enjoying the festivities and living it up in Red Deer. It was so awesome to see him and Danielle tie the knot and I can’t wait to hang out with them as a married couple.

||TECHY STUFF||

Here is the little video I shot on the road trip. Please pardon the shaky cam… didn’t have the monopod with me. I put this together mainly to test out the new Final Cut Pro X. Great system but not quite there yet. Hopefully Apple will listen to their pro users and implement changes in future software updates. One thing that is an absolute game changer for me is skimming to preview clips. Huge time saver. I also wanted to test out our new iMac. We’ve been wanting to upgrade for a while from our 2006 Mac Pro but we wanted to wait for Apple to release there updated iMac. The second I saw that it was available I put my order in. The specs are…
27 inch iMac
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GM RAM
250 GB SSD & 2 TB HDD
This is an amazingly powerful machine. The SSD is a huge performance boost, along with the i7 chip. Our processing and editing times are drastically improved. This tool will be a huge help in this years weddings.

Then came the ceremony which was held at Highlands United Church. Erin was practically raised in Whistler so we chose this church because it had a very quaint, lodgey type feel, and also some really interesting lighting. For the decor we of course got the amazing Wedding Design studio. As you probably know, Erin and I are huge Harry Potter/ Lord of the Rings fans, so we told Kim of Wedding Design Studio that, and she put together some absolutely amazing decor inspired by our obsession. Now one of the big reasons we decided to do a first look was in case I cried. I come from a big family of blubberers so we thought we’d see each other before the ceremony to get it our of my system. I didn’t cry during the first look but the ceremony was a different story. I don’t think any tears actually fell but when Erin walked down the aisle right on cue to one of our favourite songs (Transatlantcism by Death Cab) I was trying SO hard not to cry. My Uncle/Pastor Dave shared an awesome message, and then we shared personal vows as well as the traditional ones. We then walked out to Baby We Were Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (the boss). I remember my face being in physical pain from smiling so much. So happy to finally be married.

We then headed up to Grouse Mountain for the reception. The weather was dry but definitely cloudy which worked perfectly with our Harry Potter vibe. Some very touching speeches were shared by loved ones and an incredible dance party led by my band. All in all it was an incredible day that I will reminisce about extremely frequently for the rest of my life. Check out very own highlights film below.

Special thanks to…

All of our family and friends that came from out of town.
My cousins Drew and Scott for arranging and performing the ceremony music.
My cousin Kris for saving the day twice.
My cousin Melynn for designing our programs and menus.
The reception band for bringing the dance party – Adam, Denver, Dan, Scott, Drew and Danielle
Kim and her team at Wedding Design Studio for their amazing work
Andrew Noon at Clear Horizon Productions for filming the wedding
Jamie Delaine for her incredible photo skillz!
Joy Mitchell and Karen Millidrag for hair and makeup
All of our family and friends
and of course my amazing wife for marrying me.

PS Stay tuned for a montage of the dance party. The band killed it and it would be a shame not to share it with you.

We went to the big island and stayed there for 12 days. Most days consisted of a lot of relaxing, walking in to town, driving to Hapuna beach, reading and maybe a movie. Of course we couldn’t travel all the way to hawaii and not bring a camera along… so check out the brief video below of a typical day in the life of our time in Hawaii.

Be sure to check back soon for a full blog post on our wedding :)

We’ll be sure to update the blog with photos and video as soon as possible.