Fairytale Gowns Rock the Oscars 2013 Red Carpet

The Oscars 2013 red carpet showcased gowns that looked straight out of a fairy tale. They were the types of dresses you would expect a Disney princess to wear.

At Fairy Dust Photography, we love fairytale gowns. By design, they're full and eye-catching. But they're also delicate and light. It's an ethereal contrast that looks great on film, especially on a monumental day like your wedding.

Here are our favorite fairytale gowns from the Oscars 2013.

Amanda Seyfried

Jennifer Lawrence

Amy Adams

Wedding Planning Apps for iPhone that Help Plan Your Perfect Wedding Day

If you’re like many brides-to-be, you are excited about your wedding but a little overwhelmed by all the wedding planning. Between creating guest lists, booking a wedding photographer, and finding that perfect dress, you’re juggling a million things at once.

Luckily, technology is here to help! Breathe easier with the help of wedding planning apps for iPhone. These iPhone apps are a great way to stay organized and prepared so that you can plan your perfect wedding day with minimal stress!

The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner

The Knot, one of the top wedding websites around, released The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner to help brides-to-be keep track of the million wedding details that come up in the planning process. It’s an app for iPhone and iPad with features that include a countdown to your big day, a handy budget tool, tons of inspiration for all aspects of your wedding, a place to store clippings, and even a guest list manager. 

Wedding Budget

It’s one thing to splurge for your big day, but quite another to lose track of your hard-earned money. The Wedding Budget application makes it easy to create and track your budget. It comes with tons of graphs that make it easy to see whether or not you’re staying on track with your financial goals.

iWedding Deluxe

iWedding Deluxe is a powerful app that leaves no stone unturned while you plan your perfect wedding day. Need to monitor your budget? Check. What about to-do lists? It covers you there, too. Guest details, seating plans, meal plans, and bookmarking -- you think of it, chances are this application handles it.

Appy Couple

Appy Couple is a relatively new wedding planning app for iPhone and iPad that lets you plan your wedding with flexibility and style. One of its key features is how easily and beautifully it allows you to share (and gather!) information with guests. Within seconds, you can contact everyone about must-know details through elegantly designed emails that match the personalized theme of your app. You can also create polls to get opinions from attendees.

Perfect Wedding Guide

Perfect Wedding Guide helps streamline your plans. It organizes your guest list, updates reservations, helps coordinate events related to your wedding (like your bridal shower), tracks your budget, and more. It is really useful for locating vendors and limited-time deals in your area.

Don’t get bogged down in the details of your plans. Instead, take advantage of the great wedding planning apps for iPhone. They can store and organize the little details of your big event so you can focus on all the big-pictures stuff you need to plan your perfect wedding!

Are wedding photos worth thousands of dollars $#?

Check out our latest video to get "Wedding Photography Tips," more YouTube episodes to come!!!

12 Fashionable Wedding Dresses Perfect for a Fairy Tale Wedding (2013)

New York Fashion Week is underway here in New York City. While I’m a photographer, not a fashion expert, I love beautiful clothes. It’s thrilling to capture the power and grace of a stunning outfit. 

That’s one of the things I like about wedding photography. It is my job to reveal the art and craftsmanship of exquisite gowns. But that’s not my favorite part. More than anything, I love capturing the confident glow of a bride who is rocking a stunning wedding dress, the infectious smile of a woman who knows she’s turning heads. In that way, a wedding dress is more than a dress. It’s a license to create your own beautiful world, if only for a day.

My personal favorite (wedding) dress designer Elie Saab ; I was almost brought to tears when I watched his 2012-2013 haute couture line go down the runway and the finale dress was this incredible, ethereal wedding dress. 

You can watch the whole runway show: http://www.eliesaab.com/#/en/haute-couture/fw-2012-2013/1  

It will take your breath away!

In the spirit of fashion week, here are twelve fashionable, yet classic, wedding dresses for 2013 that are gorgeous enough to elevate any wedding ceremony to a fairy tale. Even if they’re out of your budget, they’re still great bridal fashion inspiration. 

Marchesa | Fall 2013

Marchesa | Fall 2013

Marchesa | Fall 2013

Vera Wang | Fall 2013

Vera Wang | Fall 2013

Carolina Herrera | Fall 2013

Claire Pettibone | Fall 2013

Maggie Sottero | Fall 2013

Monique Lhuillie | Fall 2013

Sarah Seven | Fall 2013

Marchesa | Fall 2013

Carolina Herrera | Fall 2013

What to Wear for Engagement Pictures (5 Must-Know Tips!)

Congrats, you’re engaged! I bet you’re ready to share your joy with the world, right?

Many people use engagement pictures as a way to capture and share that joy. And why not? They are photographs that preserve the deep love and excitement between two people destined to spend their lives together.

Since they tend to be more casual than wedding photos, you have more leeway in how you look. But that freedom can raise a question: What should I wear?!

Don’t stress! Here are five tips to help you figure out what to wear for your engagement pictures.

1. Be you

Sometimes couples stress about what to wear because they’re focusing too much on what other people want. What do you want to wear? Let that be the guiding light behind your fashion choices.

2. Get in sync

You have your own individual style, but so does your partner. How do you deal? Simple: get in sync with each other. Figure out what you both want the overall look of your photos to be. From there, you can choose outfits that reflect who you are as individuals and as a union.

3. Complement, don’t match

You and your partner don’t need to be “matchy-matchy” in your photographs. Instead, aim for complementary shades and textures. And try to stay in the same range of formality. It could look a little “off” if a husband-to-be is dressed to the nines and his fiancée has pulled on her favorite T-shirt and jeans combo.

4. Aim for comfort

Being comfortable throughout a photo shoot can add a dimension of effortlessness that really shines in engagement pictures. Go with an outfit that you can pop on and forget about it. For example, if you’re a casual lady who rarely wears heels, engagement pictures may not be the best time to break out 5-inch stilettos. (And if sky-high heels are a staple of your fashion ensemble, go for it!)

5. Add a splash of excess

On the one hand, engagement pictures should reflect you -- comfortable, authentic, and beautiful. On the other hand, your engagement photo session is a special day, so you may want to wear an outfit that is a step-up from your everyday style. There are plenty of simple, yet effective, ways to accomplish that. For example, paint your lips a shade darker than normal. Get a manicure in bold colors. Show off a glamorous piece of jewelry (other than your rock!).

When deciding what to wear for your engagement pictures, remember: these photographs are for you. Sure, you may share them with family and friends, but you’ll be the couple who looks back at them fondly for decades. Choose outfits that you believe will bring a smile to your face well into the future.

Share Your Wedding Photos with These Cool Photo-Sharing Apps

It may be comforting and timeless to display wedding photos at home, but in these technological times, you need effective ways to share digital photographs, too. Here are four photo-sharing apps that make sharing digital wedding photos organized, interactive, and fun.

 CapsuleCam

CapsuleCam is a free app available for iPhone and Android that makes it possible for guests at your wedding who are taking pictures to contribute their snapshots to a group photo album. Group text messaging is available within the app so that communication stays open between everyone adding to the album.  

WedPics

WedPics is a photo-sharing app that lets an unlimited number of guests share and interact with digital pictures from your wedding in real-time. During the event, the app shows a photo feed where you can leave comments and “love” your favorite pictures. Afterwards, your images are safe -- WedPics offers lifetime storage of all your photos through their website.

Snapseed

Snapseed makes it possible to enhance and share photos through multiple platforms. Now acquired by Google, the app offers a wide range of user-friendly adjustments and creative enhancements for digital photographs. Sharing your pictures is easy, too. Within seconds, you can share them through email, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. 

Flickr

The hugely popular photo-sharing website Flickr has many on-the-go options. It has apps for Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone, and it also offers an optimized version of its website for mobile visitors. You control who sees your images, so you can share wedding pictures with as few (or many!) people as you want. Need to tweak your images? It has options for filters, retouching, and more.  

You have enough to worry about during your wedding. Don’t add to your stress by rushing after guests for pictures! Photo-sharing apps make it easy to collect and share the memories your friends and family captured, guaranteeing your wedding is a day that no one will forget. http://www.flickr.com/

Beyond Digital: The Importance of Real Wedding Photos

We are a society that is always on the go. Everything is at our fingertips, from a quick email to ordering food with one click of a button. We can send sentimental love notes way faster than Cupid's arrow ever could.  No more horse and buggy or telegrams; remember those big clunker phones of the 80's! All we have to do now is press "SEND" and our warm wishes fly through cyberspace to our loved ones. 

There are very few moments where we stop to smell the roses, but when it comes to weddings, that is exactly what we do (literally)! We try our best to savor each precious moment. The slow walk down an aisle, warm glances, and carefully worded vows delivered with unflinching low.

Each gesture, ritual or glance is significant and we hold onto it, hoping that our memory will never fade. When our wedding day is over and we ride off in our Cinderella carriage toward our married life, we may later want to recount those priceless moments, and how do we do that? We admire the archives of our lives through photographs.

Wedding photos capture the moments you cherish for a lifetime and, unlike how disposable things can be in the 21st century, they last forever. In an age when relationships can evaporate with the click of "unfriend," wedding ceremonies are about making the timeless promise to stick with someone through thick and thin.

Image: 2 excited nests

While it's great to store your favorite images in albums online and share them with family and friends, wedding photos shine best when they are physically in your home.

Frame your favorites and hang them somewhere you can see them every day. Over the hearth or on the mantle are great spots for wedding photos. You want them to be in the center of your home to remind you of the unwavering love and commitment. Let them stand as physical archives of your married life. (and hey, you looked like a queen, why wouldn't you want house guests to admire them!)

Keeping photographs of your wedding at home can even make you happier. Photos taken during the highlights of your life are great for nostalgia; just looking at them can flood back warm memories of your favorite moment and remind you of the people you love. 

Image: 2 excited nests

Give your mood a boost by displaying your favorite wedding photos in places throughout your home, ideally in spots where you will pass them several times each day. Unlike photo albums online where you usually have to scan through a zillion Facebook albums to find them, physical pictures around your house are constant reminders of your blessings.

No matter who tech-savvy you are, you should leave room in your budget for framed, professional wedding photographs. Placing reminders of your favorite pictures in your home serves as an enduring reminder of the love you share, your blessings, and the powerful vows upon which you have built a new life.

That's what makes wedding photography so powerful.