The Kelly Manno Show : July 2008

So earlier this year I am standing in Walmart for a pick up when they lady asked for my last name and I said "Kelly Manno" - the girl next to me says "Are you Kelly Manno the photographer" Needless to say I was shocked and said yes, turns out she knew who I was because her mom does my mother in laws hair...one day during their Beauty shop gossip Amy's mom started talking about how her daughter was engaged, my mother-in-law started bragging on my photography and wah-la now I'm their wedding photographer. Gotta love that beauty shop gossip and Wal-mart!

But seriously how cute are these guys? They didn't take a bad photo all day!

Insiders note - This is one of the only photos of Amy wearing shoes, she was barefoot for 90% if the session and I loved it!

I also had a chance to catch up with the Hamilton family, you've seen them on my blog quite a bit! I shot Baby Reagans Birth Story 18 months ago...my, my where does time go?

~Meet Tasha and Lucy~

Tasha is very special to me, she was one of my first "real" clients under Kelly Manno Photography. She hired me to shoot her wedding back when I was almost begging for work. She was one of the people who trusted me when I said "I know I'm kinda new at this but I promise I will do a good job".

Here we are a couple years later, we both have little girls named Lucy who were born only days apart. I was there to shoot the birth of her daughter and I am honored to keep in touch and watch her little girl grow.

I also recently shot the wedding of Tonya and Jon! Her wedding day was all decked out in pink, the first thing I said was "You're going to match my blog"

*** Favorite of the Day ***

Thank you to Tonya and Jon for being such a great couple to work with...and a big thanks to Jim for assisting me this day!

~ Newlywed Session ~
Sometimes you just don't have enough time on your wedding day to get all the photos you want to get, or sometimes you just want an excuse to wear your dress one more time. A newlywed session is perfect for that!

We shot this session about 3 days after their wedding, they were still glowing!

Since your dress is already dirty from the wedding you can do fun stuff like this!

Some people take these sessions a step further and do "Trash the Dress" shoots and you literally destroy your dress...I'll be honest I've seen some people do some really weird things in those sessions, (like pretending to be dead?!?! )

I'm not going to get on my soapbox let's just say I just don't "get" them - I guess I'm not "artsy fartsy" enough :0) So in the meantime you can call this a "Dirty the Dress" session!

~Just helping spread the word~

Just wanted to let everyone know a local photographer who runs http://www.hoffman-photography.com/ has been caught stealing photos from other photographers websites, putting her logo across them, and slapping them on her website.

She has since taken down her galleries of stolen photos but here is a screen shot of them before she was caught, photographers check it out and make sure your images aren't some of the stolen http://www.phaunt.com/stolen/stolen/stolen.htm

(P.S. I think there are 2 "Hoffman Photography's" in STL so before anyone starts a boycott make sure you have the right one :)

~KATIE & BRANDON~

I have been looking forward to this wedding for a long time, I shot their engagement session and Katie's Boudoirs so I felt like I knew her really well and Brandon and I hit it off because we're both "talkers" so he and I could yap for hours.

I'm going to make this whole post just about them, no bridal party shots, no details just them because they are so sweet together and we got so many great shots of just the two of them :)