Wedding Picture Retakes

Josh and I had our 5 year wedding anniversary on October 16th, and for our anniversary I really wanted to "re-take" our wedding pictures. I didn't really like our wedding photos, for a number of reasons, mostly because my grandmother hurt herself shortly before my wedding and my grandparents were unable to attend my wedding. Because I am very close to both of them, especially my grandma, I was devastated at the news and spent a lot of the day before my wedding crying. My dream was to re-take some photos, with us in wedding attire, in our Colorado home. And this year we finally did it! It was our 5 year anniversary and it seemed fitting to do so. Now, we did not renew our vows or anything, we just took photos :)
The hardest part was finding the right photographer. The first thing that I did was ask all of my girlfriends who their photographer was, as they were all married in Colorado and all had beautiful photos! I was able to check their photographer out online and see the sample photos on their website and one photographer really stood out; Benjamin Buren of Alive Studios.
He photographed Heather and Russ's wedding, they are good friends of ours. One night at our weekly girls night Heather got out her wedding album for us to look at, and her photos were in-cred-ible! It sealed the deal for me and I contacted Ben immediately!

We were able to schedule a weekday session the day before our anniversary and negotiated a lower price. I also wanted to get the CD with all the photos to keep, which comes at a higher cost for photographers (as it probably should).
Ironically, our friends Laura and David were getting married Saturday October 17th in Estes Park, and our anniversary is the 16th, so we scheduled our photos on the 15th. We were SO glad that it worked out this way, as our great friend Geri and her boyfriend Wayne flew in for Laura's wedding.
Geri usually stays with us when she visits Colorado; she, Josh and I are three peas in a pod and get along great! (and i miss her!!!!) They were able to share the day with us and it was great to have help getting into my dress, making sure my makeup and hair looked OK, and just another girl to share the fun with!
Plus, we really wanted our dog Rock to be in the photos with us, and they were a great help taking care of her while we were taking photographs.
I wanted to take photos at both Red Rocks and in downtown Golden. Both of those places are very dear to our hearts with lots of great memories and they both offer incredible scenery and views! Then I wanted to end the shoot at Golden City Brewery (click for their link) with all of our friends for a group photo! Golden City is a great local brewery, they brew a garage and they have a very small indoor area to buy beer with a few seats, then a larger outdoor area with picnic tables to sit outside and drink your beer in the Colorado sun. They don't offer food, just great beer! Anyway, this is a place that we love and our friends love and we all *love* good beer, so it was very fitting to take some photos here.
The photo shoot was a lot of fun to do, especially because there was no actual ceremony or expectation, except to take great photos. We spent most of our time at Red Rocks getting some incredible shots on the rocks, of the front range, and with the amphitheater behind us, and we also took pics with Rock in them. Next we drove to Golden and took some photos on the bridge where Megan had taken our "engagement pics" over 5 years before. We had some great shots with Ben by the water, then he had us go onto the suspension bridge in Golden, and stand ON TOP of the table which is on the bridge for some shots. He also took some photos of us right in the middle of the main road in Golden, which turned out really cool! Lastly we walked over to the Brewery and took some awesome group shots and shots of us drinkin' some beers, which is very *us*.
All in all it was a great day, and I highly recommend Ben and Alive Studios for any photos in the Denver/Boulder area, he is incredible! Here are some more of my favorite shots!