Here are a few photos from Pam and Paul’s wedding day….
The reception was at the Meeting House Grand Ballroom in Plymouth. Pam and Paul win for best bridal party introductions ever – the bridesmaids rode into the ballroom on scooters! Awesome.
I’ve got a ton of dancing/reception pictures to go through, but I knew right away when I took this one that it was going to be a favorite ->
Congrats Pam and Paul!
A few from Ryan and Kristina’s photo session at George George Park in Clinton Township. I’ve been shooting at this park alot lately. Just a coincidence I guess, but this park does work out great for photography. Ryan and Kristina were tons of fun and pretty adventurous so this time I got to walk around pretty much the whole park and found some new spots. Here’s a few from their session ->>
Sean and Brandi got married August 14th at the White House Wedding Chapel in Warren. Awesome location for a ceremony – its really perfect inside and plenty of spots for photos both indoors and out. I just wish they gave people a bit more time before the ceremony (we only had like 15 minutes). Other than that, really great location!
I have to thank Brendan Pfaff (not only a great DJ, but a great friend as well), for the suggestion of taking them to the Warren City Center in between the ceremony and reception.
The Beer Toast!
By the way, this cute little one in lots of these pictures is Sean and Brandi’s daughter! 
I love seeing what people do with the portraits I take of them! Sean and Brandi made this nice frame that all their guests signed for them out of one of the engagement photos I took. How cool!
I also loved their table centerpieces ->
This next one, is one of those total screw-ups that in the end came out pretty cool (at least I think…haha). Brandi was tossing her bouquet and just as she let it fly a guest fired her flash and totally blinded my camera (basically we both fired at the same time). BTW, this is exactly why some photographers are jerks about other people using cameras at weddings. I personally don’t care much, and actually am pretty excited about this one:
Congrats Brandi and Sean!
A quick few from Casey and Dan’s wedding!
Kicking it off with my personal favorite two…can’t decide which one I actually like better. I’m gonna have to call it a tie:
Haven’t really gone through the “getting ready” photos yet, but I do love this silhouette of Casey’s mom bringing the dress in ->
Casey was such a beautiful bride and with such nice scenery available at George George park, my job was made super easy.
I’m a pretty big fan of the whole retro look, so this cassette tape player got me all excited:
Reception was lots of fun! It was great working with Dan from Elite Entertainment!
Congratulations Casey and Dan!
Bryan is an awesome wedding DJ with Platinum Mix! We headed downtown with his gorgeous fiance, Aileen for some pictures before their September wedding. I got lots of good ones, but thought I’d post a few of my favorites, starting with this fun series in front of some graffiti we found in an alley ->
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Here are a few from Kasie and Ryan’s July 31st wedding at the Detroit Yacht Club! — >
Kasie was a very organized and prepared bride, she even had 3 different shoe options!
Congratulations Ryan and Kasie! Thank you for having us, it was a pleasure to work for you!
Tony and Ella got married July 11th at George George Park and had their reception at the Imperial House, both in Clinton Township. The day was not only their wedding day, but also Ella’s birthday! Here are just a few of the MANY photographs I took for them!
Tony and Ella are both from Albania, and they have some very cool traditions. Like for example, its customary to have the men in the grooms family shave the groom before the wedding. So I started my day hanging out with the guys for a bit.
After the groom was dressed and ready to go, then I moved on to the bride’s house where I was (literally) greeted with open arms!
At the bride’s house, lots of family hang out and eat, drink and be merry while everybody waits for the bride to get dressed. The groom also comes over with all of his family members. The groom greets the bride, some gifts and such are exchanged and then everybody heads back over to the grooms house where the bride and her family is greeted by the groom’s family. Lots of back and forth between the two houses, but I think this tradition is really nice. It gives everybody a change to hang out a little before the ceremony and party and I loved it because I was able to take lots of photos.
The dessert spread was AH-MAZING! Just going through the pictures has me craving sweets…
What better way to decorate the tables then with buckets of ice cold beer and bottles of Hennessy? I think this is excellent planning – pretty much guarantees that your party is going to be fun! 
These folks sure loved to dance, I’m pretty sure that dance floor was never empty! The band sounded fantastic. I’d post a link to their website, but I actually forgot to get a card from them. If anybody is looking for a talented band that plays Albanian music, email me, I’d be happy to hunt down the contact info for them.
Congratulations Ella and Tony!! (and happy birthday Ella!)
Closing this post out with one of my favorite photos of the day. I happened to just be walking by and spotted these 2 children. Fired off a super quick frame just half a sec before they ran off chasing that balloon. Talk about a lucky shot!
Before I get into posting a few images for this super awesome couple, a quick update regarding photographic watermarks. I seriously HATE the thought of stamping some ugly logo/photographer credit on all of my blog images. I feel strongly that they distract from the photo, and so I held off from doing this for a long time. ‘Till a few days ago when I saw some of the photos I took in some random photographer’s online portfolio. Dude basically stole the images off my site and posted them as his own work. Of course I immediately emailed him and he did remove them, but now I’m wondering how many others have my photos in their portfolios. So. To maybe try and prevent this a little, from now on, all blogged images will have my new watermark: Sara Michele Stills + Cinema. A little name change too (and a new blog design is in the works too!). I’m not happy about this change, but it looks like in this digital age we live in that its a necessary one. 
Don’t worry though – all of my actual clients will be receiving the images with no watermark on them.
And so, now we can move on to the fun stuff!
Jessica and John Altan! Amazing couple. Fun wedding! Jessica and John Altan went to school together their whole lives but they didn’t actually start dating until college. They had the awesome idea of stopping by all the schools they went to together for a quick photo session at each after their ceremony. Here is one from their middle school ->
My day with them started at the groom’s house with a feast of sloppy joe’s and a toy gun fight:
Some quick family photos there, then off to the bride’s house. Mad props to Jessica for a PERFECT wedding day schedule. We had plenty of time for pictures, and everything ran exactly on schedule (this is incredibly rare in the wedding world!).
Ceremony was held at Sacred Heart in Roseville.
The reception was held at the Sterling Inn. The first photo is a “tradition” among Jessica and her friends –>
Thanks to Brendan Pfaff who was the DJ for the evening and introduced me to Jessica and John Altan. Brendan is a total class act amongst DJs, one of the best out there for sure.
Congratulations John and Jessica!!!
As much as I love photographing events, I’ve set a goal for myself to become a better portrait photographer. I’m gonna master those darn studio lights and get awesome at this. So thinking that babies would probably be easiest, I volunteered my services to my friend Robin who’s got a brand new baby in the family she claimed was very cute. Robin was right – baby Josephine is very cute. Sara was wrong – photographing babies is not as easy as it looks. But. I do like babies, and I do like making pictures, so now I just need a few more cute babies to practice on….
Special thanks to Josephine’s Mom, Christine, for letting me photograph her daughter. Here are a few of the results:
I’ll start out with one of my faves I snapped of Megan when she wasn’t paying attention
And one of Chris when he was paying attention:
Chris and Megan had their ceremony at St. George Lutheran Church in Brighton, Michigan and their reception was only a few miles away at Crystal Gardens in Howell. I got there a few hours before their ceremony to start the pictures:
St. George’s was great about letting me roam about during the ceremony! The priest is a shutterbug himself so he was totally cool with whatever it took to get a solid shot (except flash – but hey, who needs flash anymore anyways?)
Chris is a fireman so they thought it would be cool to go to the fire station for photos. Awesome! I had lots of ideas planned for this, but we ran out of time with the limo so this had to turn into the QUICKEST photo session of all time: 8 minutes. That’s the hardest thing about wedding photography (for me at least). 8 minutes to pick a scene, figure out a pose, get a bridal party into position, and adjust exposure. And that’s just for 1 photo…..
The cake cutting started out innocently enough:
But then an all out battle erupted!!!
No telling who won this fight…but I will say that I think Chris was covered in a little more cake. President Tuxedo called Megan 15 minutes before her ceremony to see if she wanted to rent tuxes. They were a little late with that call but little do they know they were probably better off, unless of course they enjoy scrubbing frosting off tux jackets!
The parents:
This next one is the very last photo I took that day and it turned out to be one of my favorites. Megan’s idea. Although, I have a feeling I didn’t get anywhere near the photo that she had envisioned, but I hope she likes this one too!
Great day it was! Congrats Chris and Megan!
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