Jeff & Tonya
June 5th, 1999
This is an all-time classic Lifetime Images Story: Last year in the month of July I was in the parking lot of my local Home Depot trying to load my truck with wood for a home project. I just so happened to have taken out a large print of my Daughter Camille that I had just finished framing from the back of my truck. I propped the print up next to the truck, upside down. A lady walking by noticed the print, and my magnetic business sign on the back of my truck and identified herself as a mother of a bride getting married in the following year. Since I didn't have a card on me, she wrote my phone number down on the back of her check book. About a month later I got a phone call from her, asking if she could bring her daughter over. This cute young thing shows up to my house and identifies herself as Tonya. After a very pleasant meeting I got a phone call from her a few weeks later saying that she saw a few other photographers, some had lower prices, some had perhaps a tad better work, none she liked overall better than me.

Tonya, I love ya!
 

Jeff, the smiling groom and son Robbie

In May we did a beach engagement portrait session at Laguna Beach, it was dreary, overcast, and freezing. The groom, Jeff told me at this time that he HATES GETTING HIS PICTURE
TAKEN. What's worse, some of the pictures came back with him having an expression that looked like he was a deer gazing into the headlights. I had some concerns going into the wedding. The guy was awesome! His smiles came out natural in nearly every picture. I was perplexed at his wedding why he was being so good, and we had such problems with him at the beach, he said BECAUSE I WAS FREEZING!!!!!
 

Tonya and her fabulous babes!

The most disastrous part of any wedding has got to be the toast. Well, don't get me wrong, most of the time it comes off fine, but when it doesn't, it can be quite humiliating. One wedding the bride's 12 year old brother had to read a poem that was two lines long which any fourth grader should be able to handle. He grunted and groaned and it took two minutes to get it out of him.  One of my all-time favorite disaster speeches from the best man went like this "Uhm, Lisa and Paul, your married now, I think that's cool, lets drink." Tonya's bridesmaid ROCKED THE HOUSE. It was the most wonderful poem I have ever heard at a wedding , she wrote it about Jeff, Tonya and Robbie . The bridesmaids were crying, the bride was crying, most of the guests were crying, it was amazing.


I can tell you what I was thinking about when I was taking this image. Tonya's dad probably is a man of few words, he probably doesn't say much, and he keep his emotions in check. But I can
tell by the way that he looked at Tonya that he loves the same way I love my daughters. A nice photograph of the two of them would be cherished for years by the man, and it was my duty to make the best one possible.