Chelsea Nicole Photography - Las Vegas, Southern California and Destination Alternative Wedding Photographer » Trash the Dress

Kassie & Ryan’s Wedding + After Session

chels — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:00:46 +0000

Kassie and Ryan’s ”cosmopolitan meets vintage chic” themed wedding was filled with one-of-a-kind, personal touches. As a creative couple (they are both photographers) they share a love for the arts, modern decor and fashion. They wanted a wedding that you can’t just buy off the shelf. And they had it! Las Vegas was the perfect destination for their unique celebration with family and friends, with the wedding taking place on the scenic grounds of the Springs Preserve. The ceremony was held in the Garden Arboretum, and the reception was in The Library with magical views of the strip. Here’s some of my favorites from their beautiful day.

Kassie looked absolutely breathtaking in her ornate St. Pucchi wedding dress (from the Avine Perucci Collection). The bodice was bead-encrusted, with silvery crystals that played with the sunlight.
The ceremony took place amidst the Springs Preserve’s lush botanical gardens, as the sun peaked through the trees. Over 24,000 pink rose petals lined the aisle.Circle City Designers did an incredible job on the floral and centerpieces. And as an added bonus, the reception room was filled with the soft auroma of the stargazer lilies, roses, and hydrangea.

Instead of a cake, there was a beautiful strawberry and lemon cupcake tower made by the talented girls at Gimme Some Sugar. I adored the little signs placed in some of the cupcakes with the sayings: “All you need is love” and “Love is all you need”

In addition to all the pretty details on the day itself, Kassie & Ryan’s invites for the wedding were created by one of my favorite invitation designers and friend, Tifany of Gourmet Invitations! Click here to check out photos in Tifany’s blog post and the custom plexiglass invitations she designed. And while you’re there, you may want to peak around. I’m sure you’ll love her work as much as I do!

The day following the wedding, we met back up for a day-after session and some newlywed portraits in the Nevada desert.

To see and read more about Kassie & Ryan’s wedding, check out their real wedding feature in the May/June issue of Destination Weddings & Honeymoons Magazine (on the stands now)!

Big congrats to my ultra-fab couple!

CREDITS
Venue: The Springs Preserve – Las Vegas, NV
Wedding Planner & Floral: Circle City Planners & Designers
Cupcakes: Gimme Some Sugar
Wedding Dress: St. Pucchi
Groom’s Attire: Nordstrom
Bridesmaid Dresses: Vera Wang
Hair & Makeup: Hera Beauty
Invitations: Gourmet Invitations
Music: DJ Harry O of Vegas City DJs & Vitamin String Quartet
Lighting & Furniture Rental: LED Unplugged & RSVP Rental
Linens: La Tavola Linen

Married: Kristin & Greg

chels — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 02:19:00 +0000

Today I’m going to share some images of newlyweds Kristin & Greg! I met these two during their engagement session in 2010 and instantly fell in love with their easy-going nature and sincere personalities. That, along the affinity we share for haunted houses and horror movies! I knew we’d become fast friends.

While getting to know them, I found out that Kristin and Greg love exploring new places together – especially old buildings and places rich in history. We incorporated this into their wedding photography by getting back together a couple days after the wedding for a multi-location trash the dress at the Neon Museum (a collection of iconic neon signs that are being preserved as part of Las Vegas culture and history) and the beautiful nevada desert.

Thanks goes to Megan at Makeup in the 702 for Kristin’s fabulous hair and makeup!

Loved Kristin & Greg’s matching converse shoes!

Lipstick kisses.

Marie Antoinette Themed Shoot

chels — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:00:12 +0000

Every year I put together an annual group photo-shoot for the Vegas PUG (a local meetup group I lead for super-cool professional photographers). It’s a chance for everyone to get out on location, have fun shooting with others in the community and hopefully come away inspired and having picked up a new tip or two. This year I wanted to do something a little different, so I surprised everyone with a styled shoot filled with eye-candy just begging to be photographed!

For for theme, I took inspiration from the unique style of Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a must!). I’ve always wanted to do my own take on it for a wedding-shoot and love how it turned out. Huge props go to my incredible team that pulled the vision together and made the shoot-out a huge success: AMAZING floral by Layers of Lovely, the epic cake and treats by Gimme Some Sugar, killer hair and makeup by Your Beauty Call, decor from The Pottery Shop, inspiring off-camera lighting demo by Steve Fogarty, an awesome behind-the-scenes video by Lighten Films, my girls Kristin Wilson and Liz Le for all their help bringing everything together and last but not least, our models: Carrie, Sarah and Lindsey – (all real and completely FABULOUS brides). Tons of love goes out to you all!

Here’s some of my images from the shoot:

Admittedly I always go a little crazy over Catherine at Layers of Lovely’s floral designs. Here’s Carrie modeling the pearl and peonies bouquet:

Lindsey’s rockin’ the macaroons - one thing a Marie Antoinette themed shoot would be incomplete without!

Towards the end of the shoot we topped things off with a surprise cake fight! While it was a bit sad seeing Gimme Some Sugar’s masterpiece getting torn apart, it was so much fun (and delicious too)! I couldn’t resist digging my fingers in for a little cake action – YUM!

Below is a fantastic behind the scenes video by one of my fave videographers, Terrence of Lighten Films!
You may notice that I sound like a complete dork at the beginning. I’m going to blame it on the cold, lol. It was freezing! Props go to the brides for rockin’ it out in the crazy weather we had that day.

**Click here to check out more images from this shoot in the feature on The Wedding Chicks!**

Shauna’s Trash the Dress

chels — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:34:36 +0000

I’m excited to share a few images from Shauna’s trash the dress session! I feel like I’ve known Shauna for ages. We started chatting last year when her and Dustin were in the beginning stages of planning out their wedding. They had an intimate wedding in New York, then came out to Vegas for their honeymoon and post-wedding shoot. It was awesome rocking it out together!

To top things off, Dustin’s a firefighter and brought his fire gear all the way from Florida for our shoot! Here’s a few of the images from our day together:

These first two were photographed against the colorful backdrop of the Neon Boneyard! Shauna brought along Dustin’s extra name badge to use as an adorable prop in celebration of her new last name:

To see more from this shoot, check out the feature on Destination Inspirations wedding blog!

Aviation Trash the Dress

chels — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:16:35 +0000

Johnnie is a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. For the past two years he has traveled across the globe to fly in air shows for millions of spectators. And the love of his life, Angela, has been right there with him. So it’s safe to say: Flying has played a huge role in their lives together.

After some brainstorming, we came up with the idea of doing an Amelia Earhart-esque style vintage aviation shoot in the middle of the Nevada desert.

The plane in the first image is a P-51 Mustang – one of Johnnie’s favorite vintage airplanes and one that he had the opportunity to fly alongside during many of his air shows.

I grew to love Johnnie and Angela when photographing their wedding way back in December of 2008 so I was stoked when Johnnie wrote to tell me they were returning to Vegas and he wanted to suprise Angela with a trash the dress to celebrate their 2-year wedding anniversary. It was awesome being able to both catch up on everything and capture them again at this new stage in their lives. They are bidding adieu to air shows and are starting their next adventure together in South Korea (where Johnnie’s now stationed for work). Angela even keeps an awesome photo-blog where they document all their travel and adventures.

Couldn’t resist doing my happier take on the iconic cinematography of Robert Burks in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “North by Northwest” (1959).

Emma & Fabrice in Paris, France

chels — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:45:22 +0000

Ah, Paris… Where do I begin? If Jayse were writing this he could insert some clever phrase in French like ‘C’est très Jolie!’. What an incredible city. Jayse and I had an amazing time while in the area for Lani & FX’s destination wedding in Lille, France. After putting the word out that we’d be chillin’ in Paris for a bit, I got together with newlyweds Emma & Fabrice for some romance in the city of love. Emma happens to be a fellow wedding photographer, so I was honored when she wrote to have me capture her trash the dress. She ended her initial inquiry with “my husband is super hot! so you’ll have great pics.” (um, how cute are they?!), and I knew right away we’d get along great! And of course, we totally did! Here’s a few of the photos from our time together:

Shooting early in the morning has its advantages – 1. magical lighting. 2. no tourists!

We had the most incredible view overlooking the Eiffel Tower.’ Twas pure romance!

PartnerCon Shooting Workshop

chels — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:41:45 +0000

As this year comes to a close, I’ve started to look back on my 2010 goals. One huge check off that pretty audacious list was teaching at Pictage‘s Partner Conference 2010. I was chosen to lead a shooting workshop in New Orleans. PartnerCon is a photography conference that I attribute as one of the biggest parts of my growth since the start of my business, so it was a huge honor to be on the other end this year. I was also blown away at how quick my class sold out. Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who attended and allowed me to give a piece of myself back to the photography community. I hope you came away with some solid tips and inspirations to make your own photography and connections stronger.

We had such an awesome group! Big thanks goes to my good friend Rueben Poon of Celebration Packages for helping out on the shoot and capturing these behind-the-scenes images for me to share.

Sometimes you have to get a bit dirty to get ‘the shot.’Also, thanks must go to our fantastic newlywed couple, Tiffany & Patrick! The workshop was the first day we met in person, but we instantly became great friends. These two are such awesome people and their love totally shines through — even in the chaos of 18 photographers, which I’m sure must be a bit awkward! They totally rocked it!

Here’s a few of my images from the shoot:

Tiffany’s dress was successfully trashed:Last, I want to share the other blog posts of some of the awesome photographers who attended! Everyone got completely unique and fantastic images! Click below to take a look and be sure to leave them some blog-love:

And if anybody else has images blogged, please send them my way. I’d love to share your link!

Autumn & Brian’s Trash the Dress @ Red Rock

chels — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:10:01 +0000

When I discovered that Autumn and Brian’s all-time favorite thing to do as a couple is taking road-trips to explore the world (they have seen almost all the of U.S. and Canada together), I couldn’t wait to play it up a little in their trash the dress photo-shoot! They also love visiting the national parks while traveling from place-to-place. In their 5 years together they’ve been to over 100 national parks across the country – from California to their home-state Colorado to Florida’s everglades. So for our location it was only fitting that we explore one of Las Vegas’s treasures, Red Rock Canyon National Park!

We also incorporated a fun “road-trip” theme for some of the shots. What better way than cruising through the mountains in a red mustang convertible!
Autumn was looking stunning in her Oleg Cassini wedding gown…

A+B: Thanks for an amazing day, for being up-for-anything and rockin’ it out in the Vegas heat with me! I had so much fun with you guys.

Kristen & Marlon’s Day After Session

chels — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:51:30 +0000

Meet Kristen & Marlon:

Kristen and Marlon came out from New York City for an intimate Las Vegas wedding with close family. We got together the next day for a day-after trash the dress session downtown.

These two are easy going and up-for-anything, which made hanging out and exploring the streets with them a total blast. And I think the photos we captured really show their chemistry and love for each other.

I love their retro style! Kristen was rockin’ a beautiful feather headpiece and Marlon a vintage skinny tie.

They were also sporting some awesome converse shoes!

K & M: You two are so perfect together. Congrats again on tying the knot!!

**This engagement shoot was featured on Destination Inspirations!

Sneak Peek: Kristen & Marlon

chels — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 03:09:27 +0000

Hope everyone’s enjoying their Saturday night! Jayse and I are ready to cuddle up for a movie-night in. But before we do I just had to share a little sneak peek of the shoot I’m working on:

More to come very soon!