Check out my EPIC Double Wedding in Red Rock Canyon, Las Vegas
FINALLY a sneak peek of my 20 HOUR EPIC wedding shoot on Monday in Las Vegas. This wedding may be the longest, most fun adventurous one I have photographed to date! Not to mention that I have never had two brides and two grooms at the SAME TIME which was challenging!
Alex, July, Yana, and Maxim flew all the way from Russia after seeing a blog of my work, to elope and have their destination wedding in Las Vegas! We met on skype and I was honored that they opted to have a crazy day of adventure with me rather than a traditional wedding back in St. Petersburg. I had been looking forward to this shoot for months! I spent three months helping them plan out their wedding from the location of the ceremony, to making their bouquets, to getting permits to shoot, to hiring the make-up artist (Sona Cox with Sona’s Make Up) just to mention a few details. I have to say that I have SUCH profound respect for wedding coordinators. They have such a ridiculously difficult job, but when it goes off smoothly it makes all of the hard work SO worthwhile!!
We started off the day at 6am with the getting ready shots at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. Then we drove out to Red Rock Canyon where they each had small, separate ceremonies on the top of a rock formation. I had to hike up barefoot and balance on top of a small rock to shoot the ceremony….constantly aware of the cliff’s edge where I would plunge to my death if I took a wrong step backwards! We scattered rose petals and it was so simple and gorgeous! From there we ran around and shot photos in the canyon, posed with their matching red Ford Mustang convertibles that they rented and then took off to our next stop, Bonnie Springs Ranch, the Old Nevada Wild West Town.
Bonnie Springs was so generous to let us shoot there. We borrowed old Wild West weapons from my friend Eric Brashear who owns Access Shot Tours and ran around the main street and old saloons like a bunch of vigilantes…SO much fun. We then took off to the Neon Museum, that is essentially an old graveyard of Neon Signs from the early Las Vegas days. It was heaven for me to shoot there! The colors and signs were a perfect backdrop and Alex and July brought fun props and even a hand-made string of heart cushions to play around with. I HEART THE NEON MUSEUM…But the adventure didn’t stop there. Eric Brashear, as always, saved the day with offering his boat to take us out on Lake Mead to cool off from the desert sun and take some sunset photos.
Alex and July changed into matching nautical-themed outfits and we jumped off the boat and swam and even put them on a rock in the middle of the lake and I photographed them from the boat at sunset, clad in just my yellow bikini (the perks of my job:) I can’t describe how beautiful the colors were. The rocks changed from red to a shade of violet in the matter of minutes and it was truly MAGICAL.
Afterwards, we all changed and had a lavish dinner at the Wynn Hotel, and then ended the night photographing in the streets of Las Vegas, lit only by the neon lights…an apropos ending to THE MOST EPIC DAY in Las Vegas!! I don’t think we could have planned a better way to see the best of what Vegas offers. I passed out at 1 am in utter exhaustion, but giddy with excitement to see all of these photos…So here is my sneak peek!
