the best thing about getting married in your 30’s is that most of your friends have already said “i do” so you have an unlimited supply of wedding advice at your fingertips. the weekend we got engaged, i spent an hour on the phone with one of my best friends who, having just gotten married last october, was happy to pass along some sage counsel. she told me that someone had told her to pick “three pillars” that she deemed most important (she also told her groom to do the same) in the execution of her perfect day. as long as the focus was spent on meeting each of our three pillars, the remaining details would naturally fall into place.

having dreamed about this day since i was a little girl, i’ve obviously had a long time to think about which three of the many aspects of our wedding i consider to be top priority. and aside from getting to marry the man of my dreams (duh), my top three pillars are the venue, the dress, and most importantly, the photography. because food will be eaten, flowers will fade, but photos will ensure the memories of our special day live on forever.

given the fact that both my mom and S are quite the shutterbugs, photography is very important to our family. so if there was ever a place in the budget to splurge, it would be on securing the right photographers to capture every detail of our wedding. having perused a few (dozen) wedding themed blogs/instagram accounts over the past few years, i knew how talented the team of rachel and rico castillero of studio castillero was in retelling the story of a couple’s special day. so admittedly, they were the very first vendor i reached out to after we got engaged to ensure their availability for january 2017. lucky for us, january isn’t peak wedding season, so we were able to solidify them as our vendor and had the pure pleasure of meeting rachel in person at our engagement photo shoot on sunday evening. here she is with rico below:

we just got the proofs back on our photos yesterday so once we sort through them (initial thoughts: we’re in LOVE), i’ll obviously dedicate a full post to the engagement shoot itself. but in the meantime, i wanted to share a couple photos we snapped on my iphone before we wrapped. to say it was a dream afternoon would be an understatement. i cannot WAIT to be reunited with the castilleros in january!

photo of R&R via andria lindquist