Real wedding: Jen + Hooper

I just love this wedding Amanda at Love Me Do Photography sent over…that cape and those tattoos totally sold me!

Our first wedding of this season was definitely a great one to start off with.  We were introduced to Jen and Hooper through co-worker friends of Amanda from the Philadelphia  Museum of Art.  Jen is a photographer (www.jenbandini.com) and blogger (www.escapetonewyork.net), and Hooper is a painter/drawer (www.hooperturner.com).  Since they were on a pretty tight budget, (and because we love their artwork!) we arranged to do a trade of services.  We photographed the wedding in exchange for a painting and photograph from each Jen and Hooper, which we both adore!

Their wedding took place on the Ladies Pavilion in Central Park in NYC on the edge of the pond, officiated by Kim Kirkley (ourelegantceremony.com).  Kim offered to perform the cermony in exchange for a donation to the Bed-Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corps, a twenty year-old group that provides transportation and EMT service for a much under-servered area of Brooklyn.  It was a grey, windy New York day, but the sky matched Jen’s dress wonderfully and the photos in Central Park are some of our favorites we’ve taken.  Music during the ceremony was performed by friends, Austin Hughes and Glendon Jones of M. Shanghai String Band that brought guests to tears.  A reception followed at Rue 57 (http://www.rue57.com), hip French Bistro in Midtown, where their guests enjoyed a delicious dinner and celebrated the remainder of the evening with the newly wed couple.

Jen and Hooper designed their own invitations and save the date(http://escape-to-new-york.blogspot.com/2009/04/04202009-our-invitation-i-love.html) which were then letterpress printed by a good friend, Maggie Portis (http://gamewellpress.typepad.com/) as a wedding gift. Jen designed centerpieces, favors, and flowers herself.  Handmade masks, personalized bookmarks, and favors were made from clipart downloaded from clipart.com and printed at Kinkos. The paper dolls favors, which were a joint effort between Hooper and Jen – he did the drawings and she designed the layout and packaging.  Jen actually ended up printing a lot of stuff on her inkjet printer at home.   Jen’s hand-tied bouquet of ranunculus, scabiosa, and lisianthus came from freshroses.com.  Jen wore a silk chiffon evening gown was from Bergdorf Goodman, adorned with a custom capelet by Kate Towers, katetowers.com, and gloves by Carolina Amato.  Wedding rings were from weddingbands.com.  Hooper’s cufflinks were custom-made from typewriter keys by Joy’s Jewels.  The cake was made by Cake Alchemy (http://www.cakealchemy.com).   And of course, photography by Carina Romano and Amanda Jaffe of Love Me Do Photography.

[images by Love Me Do Photography]