Brie and Bobby: From Choo to choo-choo!

Filed under: Weddings — admin |

Rincon Beach Club
October 25, 2008

The second leg of my triple header weekend included a scenic drive up the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara (well, almost to SB) and the Rincon Beach Club. I hadn’t met with Brie and Bobby before their wedding day, although about seven years earlier I had photographed Bobby’s brother’s wedding up at Firestone Vineyard in Santa Ynez. I even shot it on f*lm! Yikes! Imagine my delight in finding that the bride was drop dead gorgeous and the groom had dreadlocks and bright red painted toenails!!! Does it get any better. Talk about keeping it interesting, my groom from the day before was the Marine helicopter pilot for the President of the United States! Both were SUPER cool and about as different as they come.

The ceremony took place right on the beach in Carpenteria amidst a curtain of fog that gradually dissipated throughout the ceremony. Brie and Bobby chose the location and placement of the wedding arch very specifically such that, had the conditions been right, you could have seen an oil rig in the distance directly in line with the arch. This rig was the same rig that Bobby’s brother, who passed away six years earlier, had worked on. Sadly, even once the fog had lifted, the atmospheric conditions just weren’t right and we couldn’t see the rig. Still, it was a spectacular sunset with gorgeous golden California light bathing the beach for our portraits. It was very hard to pull ourselves away.

After a short hop on the vintage trolley car shuttle, we made our way into the reception at the Rincon Beach Club. I must say that at night, the venue really transforms into a magical place. The chinese lanterns give a warm soft glow to the whole outdoor seating area. The hedge covered walls were laden with twinkle lights that made for exceptional backgrounds especially when combined with the uber-yummy bokeh (sorry, geeky technical term for the out of focus area of an image) of my 85 F1.2 lens. Yup, this is what gets true photographers all fired up. He, he.

In the “small world” department, I was TOTALLY shocked when as the groomsmen walked up I found myself staring at an old friend from our Valencia days named Matt Pearson. If you look at the wedding galleries of all the images on my website, he’s the one who, along with his beautiful wife, Mary, was making all the dorky faces in the background of otherwise very nice shots. Matt and I used to play golf together at the TPC at Valencia. Small, small world.

Once again, as I manage to bring the story back to me, I’m sure you’d rather see pretty pictures. Well, here they are…