D-Jones needs your help!

Hello all! I hope you are doing well.

My fiance Zach is vice president of a small company named D-Jones Tailored Collection. The owner, Drew Jones, has been nominated for a new entrepeneur of the year award, with a major cash prize for the winning company--but right now they need your help. Please take a few seconds and go HERE to vote for them, every day from now till November 6. It's a small thing, but it will really help!

Also, if you'd like to pass on this info via e-mail, twitter, linkedin, facebook, your own blog... for the next 10 days they need as many votes as possible to make it to the next round, where Drew will go to San Francisco November 18 to earn part of $100,000 in business grants. you can vote once from your computer and once from your smart phone per day.

Here's more info about the contest.

This is D-Jones Tailored Collection's home page.


Check out this video overview of D-Jones Tailored Collection, thanks to photographer Stacy Reeves.


Thanks so much,
Abby

Gruene love!

A few weeks ago I got to shoot engagement photos for Chris and Christi. I've shot couples before, but not engagement photos, and the energy was amazing! These two had a great time laughing and hamming it up, and I have to say these photos are some of my favorites. What made it even sweeter is both their first date and the proposal happened right there in Gruene, so it was only fitting for them to have their engagement photos taken in the same location. Hope you enjoy, and congratulations to Chris and Christi! If you'd like to see the rest of their photos, check out my photo site.

ATTN: San Antonio photography clients

Hello y'all! I'm headed to San Antonio the last weekend in August and I've got some openings if any of you are interested in having some portraits done! I can do family, pet, kids, engagement and bridal portraits. Check out my smugmug site to see my work!

I have times Saturday early evening and Sunday morning. E-mail me if you want to set something up!

abbyw06@gmail.com

SEE you at the wedding?

Hey guys! I hate that I haven't posted in a long time, but work's kicking my butt and I've been doing a fitness bootcamp 3x a week- 6AM while training for a 10K 4x a week... and the weekends have been busy too. I miss blogging, a LOT. Last year at this time I was wandering around the Cinque Terre in Italy.... and here I am a year later with photos from London left to blog from that trip. It's my goal to get to that this week. :-)

Anyway, I read this blog post this morning from one of my favorite blogs A Practical Wedding. Here's a quote that stuck with me:

..."People keep saying things to us like, "I'll see you in two weeks, but I won't SEE you." or "You'll be too stressed to talk, but I'm excited to be there." or "I'll see you from afar, but you won't have a minute to talk," or, or, or.... and all I can think is if we don't get to hang out with people over the weekend of our wedding, if we don't have chats, if we don't have gossipy drinks, if we don't have teary hugs, and excited arm waving conversations, if we don't really SEE people, then... this is one over-priced party.

So, sanity check, my wedding graduates. I suspect that, if you put your mind to it, you will actually see people at your wedding, and actually enjoy time with them. It's like remembering your wedding... if you want to, you will..."

I think that is so great. Our guests are really important to us, and both Zach and I hope we'll get to visit with each and every one of you at our wedding!

Anyway, I've got a lot of deadlines today so I need to make this short, but I hope you all are doing well!

FINALLY

Our wedding web site! Let me know what you think!

www.mywedding.com/abbyandzach

All the pretty people, down at El Cerrito Place...

Hey y'all! I had a BLAST last weekend with Randi Beth in Los Angeles--my first time to really explore the City of Angels. I also got my wedding dress from a girl there and transported it home in my big suitcase. I have tons of photos, but Randi, being awesome with technology, made us a montage video! Check it out at her blog HERE and let me know what you think!

Bachelorette time!

I know I swore I was done with the Bachelor/Bachelorette shows after Jason was so mean to Melissa last season, but... of course, I'm watching again. Never seen the Bachelorette before, and it's definitely a little bit different! The point of this post is to funnel any bachelor/bachelorette fans/haters to the greatest recap blog ever- I Hate Green Beans. It makes me laugh OUT LOUD every tuesday after the show. THIS is the reason I watch the show. Check it out!

Also check out the host of the show's blog. He's hilarious and has some great behind the scenes stuff. And if you are behind on the show-- go to ABC.com to catch up--you're only three episodes behind, even though they are 2 hours long. sheesh. Enjoy!

Lake Como

I've had this entry's photos stored for a couple months, but every time I get ready to write the text I don't have my journal or guidebook to fill in the details! Now that Zach and I are actually considering going to Lake Como/Florence again for our *honeymoon*... I wanted to revisit! Hope you'll enjoy!

After saying goodbye at Jonathan and David very early at the train station in Milan, Zach and I took the metro to the Central station and boarded a train to Varenna on Lake Como! We arrived at 9:15 AM, giving us plenty of time to spend on the lake. It was nice and cool outside, which was a really nice change from the heat we'd been traveling through all trip. 
We dropped off our bags at the gorgeous hotel- Villa Cipressi- and walked down to the middle of town for some breakfast beside the lake at a cafe. 
We had a great breakfast on the lake at the Nilus bar: fruit salad, brioches and cappuccinos. We enjoyed watching the ducklings and swans on the shore and the view!

Cute little yorkie at the cafe!

After a leisurely breakfast, we walked along the romantic promenade beside the lake to the end of town and boarded a boat to explore the other cities on the lake. A big contrast from Milan's business atmosphere and the touristy spots, everyone was just relaxed and happy. We headed over to Bellagio across the lake. 

In Bellagio, we walked around the shops, had some coffee and walked through the gardens of the Villa Metzi Gardens. Apparently it was assembled by the vice-president of Napoleon's Italian Republic in the 1800s. The following photos are from the gardens, where we spent a few hours exploring.

We sat at this Gazebo for a while, just enjoying the view.

gorgeous flowers!!

Of course, Zach made friends with the Italian squirrels.

After spending a while in the gardens, we boarded the boat and cruised around to look at the other towns along Lake Como. We realized we were exhausted, so we just stayed on the boat and enjoyed the breeze. :-)

We went back to the hotel and tried to take a nap, but discovered that our beautiful villa had no air conditioning. And it was now very hot. Opening the window opened it up to the busy street below with people across the street calling to each other out their windows and cars driving by. 

Later that evening, we went back out on the town for dinner. We ended up at the same place as breakfast! I had fragiolo rosso- strawberry wine and sangria. we shared cold ham with cheese from the region. It was so delicious! I also had fettucine crepes that were kind of weird.  Zach had salmon crepes.  We shared tirimisu. Sidenote-- i'm so glad I wrote all this down in my journal cause there's no way I would have remembered all the meals we had! :-) 

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and took care of some stuff on the internet and connected with my friend Stephanie Lee who we were staying with at our next destination: LONDON. Sleeping in that room was a bit tough, but zach got us a fan. My main memory from that hotel is how hot it was, even though it was beautiful. :-(

July 31 we woke up at 6am, packed our bags and got breakfast at our villa. It was THE best breakfast we had on this trip--and it was included. Check out the view we had!

We took the train back to Milan's central station and took a taxi to Livate Airport. We got there 2 1/2 hours early, and that was a good thing because that airport was so disorganized! Looking back, I think this is a trend with Italian airports. Just a bit different! Here's the view of the mountains beside Lake Como.

Next post about our trip, I'll talk about London and possibly Bath--and then we headed home! Hard to believe it's been almost a year since we went there! 

READERS: lend me your opinions!

Hey y'all! Faith has been bugging me to post and I do apologize for my negligence. I have been tied up a bit. This is just a quick post, but I would love some feedback from you guys. So far this blog has been about what's going on in my life--illustrated with photo of course, blogging about my Europe trip(I really do have 2 last entries of photos waiting for text--getting to it soon!) and photos from my photo shoots. Since wedding things are a huge part of my life right now, what would you like to see relating to that? It can be bullet points on the decisions we've made or are working on(photos too), links to cool stuff, short entries just talking about life... pics turned into LOLcats... or wait, that's the wrong blog here. Long story short, I want to know what you'd like to see. You can look at the links to the right on http://throughabbyslens.blogspot.com to see some cool wedding blogs.

Anyway, that's all I have time for for now. Deadline looming. :-) yay! 

It's a love story, baby just say YES

This is an exciting post for me to write. Many of you who read my blog know the story of Zach and I. We first met 8 years ago at a homeschooling bookfair in Houston-- both our parents own homeschooling supply companies, and we met while we were working for our parents. I was 16--he was 19 and a college soccer star/ smoking hot model. His cousin Jonathan was also there. I made Zach sign his model card for me because I knew he'd be something great one day. 

We exchanged contact info and kept in touch for the next few years. His brother, sister and cousin went to A&M and I hung out with Zach there once. I worked at the State Fair of Texas in 2005 and called him up on a whim. We hung out and saw Gary Allan together. Though I didn't know it, he was attracted to me! This amazingly hot and cultured guy! Fast forward to January 2007. I moved to DFW for my new job right out of college and I knew 4 people in the area. So I texted all of them. Zach was one, and he called me up to hang out. I was super excited! First time we hung out was supposed to have been going swing dancing with Jashley and Grant

 but everything iced over. Zach and I hung out despite the weather, and we were steady companions for about a month before he confessed his feelings to me February 19, 2007.

I could write a book about how much our love has grown since then, but I'll spare you. :-) Fast forward to May 2, 2009. My birthday was just a few days before and Zach's is May 4, so his family held a joint birthday party. I guess you'll have to talk to him to get his side of the story, but 20 of his family and our friends gathered that evening and I was the only one in the dark about the REAL reason for the party. Here is some of the decor, food and cake Zach's sweet mom Sharon set up for us. 

Here we are! I'm wearing the new top Sharon gave me for my birthday with jewelry from Zach.

After eating, it was time for gifts. I was terror-stricken because I'd been practicing a song on the piano to play for zach for off and on-- more than a year. Sadly. Prayer for Taylor by Michael W. Smith is his favorite song and it's kind of hard to play! I was so worried about that, but it went all right. :-) Next was gifts. Here I'm opening the purse to go with my outfit and jewelry! :-)

Zach went to open his last gift supposedly from his cousin Jonathan...

"Jonathan's" gift to Zach was a stack of magazines, followed by a box wrapped in newspaper. He unwrapped it and it was a James Avery box. Any Texas girl raised right knows the James Avery symbol on their little boxes-- high quality sterling silver charms for bracelets and affordable jewelry for guys and girls. Since I myself had just received some james avery earrings from my brothers 5 minutes before, I thought to myself, "well maybe Jonathan got him one of those rings we saw the other day..."

Zach fished out of the jewelry bag a very not-James Avery ring... it was all sparkly... definitely not something he'd want! He said "I believe this is for you..." and held it out to me. I froze and started shaking/crying all at once because I knew what that was! He got down on one knee and in front of everyone asked me "Will you marry me?" What do you think I said?

Amid tears I did say yes. :-) And I was shaking for a good while.

Everyone there has been with us for the long haul and they were all waiting for this day as much(maybe more!) than me. :-)

It's still a little surreal that I get to marry my best friend!

We celebrated with our special birthday glasses and a wine made just for us... or so it seems. I'm so glad someone made this brand of wine!

Ok, on to the sparkly details, since if you're like me, you live for this stuff. :-)

Zacharoo designed this ring himself and went through Bova Diamonds, a company based out of Israel... hello! I love Israel! I feel like because my mom's family is Jewish and my first time out of the country was to Israel--this makes the ring EXTRA special.

The main stone is from Baseball Diamonds and it's a stunning and unusual pear shape. It's ringed and accented by a host of pave diamonds. All of which serves to make my ring a vintage-looking and unique part of me! ps- that is alfred's foot and pierre in the next pic. sorry. The cat's are enthralled with shiny things. sigh.

Thank you to all of you who have supported us both throughout our relationship. I hope this fills in the blanks if anyone was wondering the story! We've set the date for 1.10.10 if we find a venue available then. We're close to booking one... I'll keep you posted if you want!