Thank you James and Tina!

I have so much to be thankful for. Everyday I thank God for all the things he’s given me: life, friends, family, home, and last but not least a job that I absolutely love. I’m constantly reminded everyday how fortunate I am to have my dream job. Every morning I wake up whenever I want (at a reasonable hour of course) and I smile because I’m not stuck in traffic (I don’t commute and I hate traffic.)

Plus, the people I work with (brides and grooms) are really happy. I love happy people, and I love being around them. What’s more is my clients are some of the coolest people I know. Honest. In some jobs you’ll only meet people in your building/industry/company. In my job I’ve worked with newly weds who are models, doctors, professors, therapists, teachers, etc etc. Two of my wonderful

I got this really awesome gift and card from James and Tina who got married on April 2, 2011 (Congratulations!!!!) They’re such an amazing couple with a couple of amazing dogs!!! Their dogs were their ring bearers!! Isn’t that s cool! Thank you so much Tina and James for sending me the card and the cuff links. Those are some bomb cuff links, I don’t know even know where you got that from! Thank you thank ou!

Meet Jen and Kevin (Surprise Engagement!)

I was in San Diego a couple of weekends ago to shoot a wedding, and Kevin offered to let me stay at his place and he also had ideas to propose to his girlfriend. So Kevin and I discussed ideas on how that would go down, and we had it all planned out. Well sort of. We were actually planning it the night before while his girlfriend was in the vicinity. When we thought Jen was in the bathroom, we started to map out the plans sort of like secret agents talking about top secret stuff. But then Jen comes down the stairs in the middle of nowhere catching us both off guard so we sit there silently staring at each other, and Jen thought it was weird that were just sitting in a living room not talking and staring at each other. I try to play it off by being in deep thought, and luckily she didn’t suspect anything more than an awkward moment.

So Jen just thinks that I’m in town doing a quick fun photo session with her and Kevin, and because Kevin is a photographer as well and he’s never in photos himself, I think Jen thought that made sense. And I think Jen was just pretty excited to take some photos, what girl doesn’t right? So Sunday morning we head out to La Jolla and we walk around the beach a little bit, and Kevin’s pretending like everything’s normal but I know deep down inside he’s sh***** bricks. I can tell he’s nervous because I’ve never seen him so unrelaxed. The key indicator to me before he goes down on the knee was “Erich where do I put my hands?” So it didn’t take him very long to ask me that, and I just told him to put his hands in his pockets (where he can reach for the ring) and then bam! His right knee drops to the floor 🙂

And this is the part where it get’s interesting. I’ve seen this happen a few times where the girl gets proposed to but they’re in a little bit of shock and they don’t even answer the question and the only thing they can mutter is “Really? Really?” It was really cute actually. But of course she eventually said yes a few minutes later, but it was implied that it was yes the whole time because of her dropped jaw and excitement.

And there was a rainbow in the background!!! Couldn’t have been better 🙂 Congratulations you two!!

The shot below was not something I had posed, Kevin was really nervous moments before the next shot…It was more of a uncontrolled reflex, and it was …cute.

Meet Sue and Gan (Engagement)

After photographing this super cute couple I realized something about myself that’s pretty important: I like being with people that laugh at everything. I don’t think I’m particularly a funny person, but when people laugh at my antics, I feel like a funnier person. That’s why Sue and Gan’s engagement session was such a pleasure to photograph. I’ve never met Sue prior to this shoot, but we’ve emailed a lot and the first thing she does when she sees me is gives me a huge hug. It was so heart warming! I love my job. This session was photographed in Downtown Fullerton, it’s such a nice local Orange County spot that I like to frequent sometimes. We were pretty fortunate because I saw this super cool blue vespa sitting out front of the train station and I used it in some of the photos. So I haven’t told anyone this but… secretly (I guess not so secretly now) I want a vespa. Given the right helmet a vespa + helmet combo can be pretty awesome.

Anyways, Sue’s parents own a korean fried chicken place. I think my salivatory glands just secreted as I typed that. If you’ve had korean fried chicken you know what I’m talking about. But she told me the restaurant is in Georgia. 😦 That made me so, so so sad. Congratulations on your engagement and enjoy the photos!

A Birthday card! And I got pranked!

I got this incredible birthday gift from Tam and Ed, one of the FUNNIEST and nicest couples ever. Well to be more specific Tam’s super duper nice, and Ed’s probably one of the funniest dudes I know on this planet.

Look what they gave me! It’s a birthday card of an elephant! They gave me an elephant because they never want me to forget who they are. Isn’t that adorable? 🙂 Tam and Ed, I’ll never forgot you guys. You guys are such a joy and pleasure to work with and be friends with!

Thank you so much for that, and thank you so much for the one dollar. I promise I will use it wisely tonight.

As for those who don’t know me, I do have the unfortunately birthday of today. April Fools Day. It was definitely tough growing up because nobody would believe me on my birthday.

Me: “Hey guys, it’s my birthday!”
Friend: “haha yeah right.”
Me: “No really it is”
Friend: “Go away.”

Yup that’s pretty much how my life was growing up….

And I’m twenty something years old now and I’m still getting pranked. And this time around it’s my good friend Nathan Nowack who send me a fake wedding inquiry that I TOTALLY fell for. Check out this email I got this morning…

NAME: Erica Chen
EMAIL: ericachen@slooflirpa.com
PHONE: 760-845-xxxx (I changed this because it’s an actual number)
EVENT LOCATION: St. Regis
EVENT DATE: 1-7-12
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT ME?: Friend of a Friend
MESSAGE: OMG Erich, not only are our names almost the same but your photography is truly amazing. I have a 400 person wedding in Jan. and need 12 hours of coverage, 2 photographers, 12×12 album and 2 parent albums, and would like more info. My budget is $7000, please let me know if that is doable. I’ll pay anything for your talent. Oh, and Happy Brithday 4-1 boy.

It’s good. He got me. It’s subtle enough to where I didn’t suspect anything in the morning (I read emails first thing in the morning. I felt so dumb afterwards when I found out. Nathan spent a good solid minute laughing at me over the phone.  It’s a good thing he didn’t put up a real email address because my response was over the top. I’ve never photographed at St. Regis before and I thought it was ‘fate’ when the name was Erica Chen. yeahhh.  If you noticed the email address is april fools spelled backwards, I didn’t watch that even though I did notice it, but i thought it was some fancy french word.