We’re celebrating and saluting small businesses during a time when they are suffering and waiting to reopen full force. Today, I want to shine the light on Bridal Traditions. Kelly Shumate, the owner of BT and beYOUtiful Boutique … oh how I love this girl. We have been friends for more than a decade and have memories to back up that time. Pixels even created her logo back in the day.
If you find yourself on a small, blue marble hurling through space, you should have a Kelly in your life. I photographed her bridal anniversary portraits, pictures of her with her sweet husband and pup for the holidays, and the Wilkes Wedding Expo for years.
Kelly is community-focused, a smart business woman, a good time Charlie and one of the hardest working women in the biz.
We’ve photographed the Wedding Expo for years including this previous one in 2020, but I have also had the fun and pleasure of accompanying Kelly and her team to Atlanta for prom and wedding markets and buying efforts over the years for her boutique. Watching her work, choose styles and chat with other vendors is the best.
Bridal Traditions just celebrated its 20th Anniversary. I couldn’t be more excited for her, more proud of her, or more happy to have her as one of my best friends. If you aren’t following her on Facebook or Instagram, I hope you will.
We love graphic design and commercial photography whether logo design, brochure design, head shot photos, architectural photography or product shots. At Pixels On Paper we pride ourselves in listening to a broad range of clients and customizing our photography and graphic design services to meet each individual request. Our skills, styles, and visions come together to be a permanent record that either reflects an identity or delivers a message that speaks to thousands. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your business needs. Email us at mail@pixelsonpaper.net or call 336.990.0080 to learn more, receive a quote or to let us know how we can put our skills to work for you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2020 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
We’ll be there again this year with our own booth ready to meet brides-to-be, see other wedding professionals and talk about what we love and have been doing for nearly 15 years.
The Wilkes Wedding Expo is one of our favorite events because we’ve been a vendor and taken photos of the event for so many years, and met so many brides and couples who’ve become clients, friends and like family to Ryan and me. Those connections have led to such strong bonds that we always look forward to March each year. There’s an enormous amount of expectation and fun in the air and talking photography, venues, spring and summer weddings and big plans gooses us into gear.
Here are the details, but you can visit https://wilkesweddingexpo.weebly.com/ or Bridal Traditions to learn more if you are a bride ready to get organized!
Sunday, March 10, 2019
at The John A. Walker Center
from 1:00pm until 4:00pm
See you there!
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Our photography foundations series continues with bridal portraits. Ladies……… we love doing these. You look beautiful – ALL OF YOU. You’re hair and makeup are done and you’re wearing one of the most glamour dresses you’re ever going to own and in the right setting, it’s magical.
We’ve taken bridal portraits months before the wedding, weeks or days before and even after the wedding has taken place. Sometimes, the timetable doesn’t work out and we are more than happy to see the bride again in the same or a different setting after she’s a Mrs.
Our hearts go out to the parents of brides and grooms. I think about this every time that Ryan and I shoot a wedding. God Bless the parents. They are exhilarated and stressed, proud and nervous, but mostly in love with their kids – who are no longer kids. How do you go from diapers to driving and then big decisions? How do you go from watching them choose a sport in middle school to a spouse for life? And with grace? To the parents, this must feel like it happens in 72 hours rather than a couple of decades. We honor the parents and love watching them love a celebration of their kids.The tender moments included watching Ashley’s father place a pearl necklace around her and seeing them both in tears. The mind goes to the number of times they stood that close together as he watched her grow up and now, here she was: a bride.
While Ashley Caudill and Oscar Orozco married young (please read about their engagement to learn how they met), their wedding showed astonishing wisdom, love and faith. Prior to the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom were blindfolded and they joined hands while Oscar prayed for them. I (Misty) was the only other person in the room and it was incredibly touching. I wish that there was a recording of the words in Oscar’s prayer for them, because they were filled with humility, grace and wisdom far beyond his years. Both Ashley and Oscar agree that the best moment of the day was seeing each other for the first time. Neither of them could hold back crying tears of joy and reflect on those moments whenever they look back and talk about their wedding day. A lasso binding ceremony is part of the Orozco’s culture. A beautiful rhinestone cross lasso was placed around Ashley & Oscar by their parents symbolizing a binding unity as they prayed together and said their vows. We would love to see how the lasso will be used in future generations as an heirloom.
Another outward gesture of unity and symbol of their faith was a binding of three cords which Ashley & Oscar created and performed representing the scripture verse from Ecclesiastes 4:12 “Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Oscar’s family is from Mexico, and they speak Spanish primarily, but it was amazing to see how these two families, two cultures and two language barriers were brought together in love. They combined elements from both into the wedding ceremony and the reception.When asked, Ashley and Oscar said there isn’t one thing that they would change about their wedding day. The most memorable moments for them that they want to hold on to forever included performing the cross ceremony during the wedding, spending time with each other during pictures after the ceremony and of course Oscar said the vision of Ashley in her wedding dress.Ashley and Oscar both recall laughing when seeing Oscar’s car covered in toilet paper after their reception exit.
Ashley was the couple’s wedding planner and she also hand-made all of the flowers, bouquets and center pieces, but their other vendors included:
Wedding Attire: Bridal Traditions
Ceremony and Reception Venue: Thanks Be To Calvary Baptist Church, Elkin NC
Cellist for the Ceremony: Steve Holman
Caterer: Oscar’s Father
Desserts: Kathy’s Creations in Sparta
Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brid