Congrats to my cousin Sara, now Sara Sabino Guitierrez! After months & months of planning, she finally tied the knot last Saturday, August 20th. We added one more to our massive family wolfpack, & we couldn’t be happier!

Of course, since it’s a family event, I volunteered to set up my photobooth at the reception in Oakland. The wife was behind the camera, & I was in front running around & organizing shots. Check out our handiwork:

The first time I visited Angelique’s cubicle, I knew that we would get along. The Jordan Knight pin on her wall foretold of a friendship to come. A couple weeks ago, Ian and I were thrilled to be present to witness Angelique and Ron’s nuptials at the Old Mission San Juan Bautista. It was a gorgeous day and a beautiful setting both at the mission and at the reception site, Villa Montalvo. The food catered by Le Papillon only added to the elegant experience. The night was full of fun memories a perfect celebration of the newly wedded couple. Congratulations Angelique and Ron. We wish you a long, happy life together!

They made it official with a gorgeous ceremony in Mountain View, & ended the night with a banquet in Santa Clara. For those who don’t know this about me, me & my buddies from church are a part of an a capella group we called Bound by Faith. My cousin & bride, Myra, is one of our diehard fans, so she came to us & asked if we could perform. Because the venue lacked the amount of microphones we needed, we did the next best thing & presented this music video with a soundtrack we created ourselves. With our voices. Pretty impressive, right? Sorry, it’s the best we can do.

Okay, no more stalling. Here’s the video:

Congratulations, Myra & Jay! Welcome to the club!

Our T-Bone is all grown up. He’s blessed to have a beautiful wife & with a beautiful ceremony up in the hills of Berkeley on an early Sunday morning. The fog on the hillside & the gorgeous location made for an extremely scenic wedding, California style.

You also gotta give them credit—their wedding happened to land on Talk Like a Pirate Day, so they made sure to play the part.

Of course, as his friends, we did our part to help him out. Not only did I volunteer to photograph his wedding, he even asked Alex to officiate the wedding, in which he did a superb job. To top it off, he even performed a musical number during brunch. An honest-to-goodness one man show.

Welcome to the club, T-Bone & Molly! Here’s to a wonderful & prosperous future with your new family.

These are my friends who came from far to visit: some as far as St. Louis & Hawaii, others even farther from Japan & Thailand. It has been more than a few years since I’ve seen my international friends, so no doubt, we were really excited. They land in SFO, so it made sense to have our San Mateo apartment the meeting point for all our guests. They got to see our new apartment, too. Also a good opportunity to further explore Downtown San Mateo—it’s always better to do these kind of things with visitors!

The day after our wedding, my parents threw us a nice Saturday luncheon at the Embassy Suites in Santa Clara. Just like I did the night before, I set up my spare camera & created a makeshift photo booth for all to use! A good way to document all of our visitors. Again, a hit!

Also, the photo booth set up the perfect photobombing session—hours of portrait-ruining fun (evidenced by my sister in the photo above).

The whole set with thumbnails can be found in my Flickr feed down below:

Wedding Saturday luncheon photo booth

I set up one of my cameras, some lights, a remote trigger & instructions at our wedding dinner reception so I didn’t have to go around to take everyone’s photos. It was a hit!

There are a lot of photos in this album (nearly 200), so it’s probably best to view them as thumbnails:

Wedding dinner reception photo booth

You don’t see this often at the Coliseum: a bride & groom taking their wedding photos in the field level aisle. They couldn’t have chosen a better day—the weather was perfect for such an occasion. Much props to these newlyweds, hardcore A’s fans!

The A’s killed the Texas Rangers 9 to 1 that evening, mainly because of our section’s jeering of the Rangers’s left fielder David Murphy & my sign that took me hours of crafting on illustration board the night before:

I'mma let you finish...

Muuuuuurphy!

Wedding photos at the Oakland Coliseum

Congratulations to the newly engaged, T-Born (aka Tim) & Molly! Actually, about a month ago, Molly was assigned to fly out to work in Tahiti & T-Born decided to propose right before she left. Only now that she’s back (after being away from ‘Born for a little less than a month) can we celebrate this exciting occasion!

After I found out about the engagement (through T-Born’s rarely updated Facebook status), I shared the good news with our other Japan friends. Sharing the excitement, we thought it would be a wonderful idea to celebrate over dinner. We dined two consecutive Fridays to show how happy we are of the news.

Molly, T-Born, Angelo

Last Friday, Alex offered to whip up a dinner feast, the usual fare at his house. When it comes to cooking for his good friends, he doesn’t like to hold back:

Yep, that's pasta with bacon, buttery crawfish, gumbo, as well as 'taters & sausage. Angelo's contribution was the thai chicken. Spicy meal, indeed.

Food comas are dangerous at dinner time because we still had to drive home super drowsy.

Our wedding was lovely. It was filled with fun, food, & laughter. To add fuel to the fun & being the big photo geek that I am, I thought it would be a cool idea to set up a self-run photo booth that our guests could use. It ran with a camera, two lights & a remote to trigger the shutter. Guests would stand within a laid-out box that I’ve marked on the ground, use the remote that was available to them, smile to the camera & press the big red button. To show a bit of dinner crowd & to express my love for candid photography, the camera faced into the dining area.

Above is a photo of my Auntie Remy & Uncle Raul. The creepy couple standing behind them in the shadows a couple feet behind them are my two good friends T-Bone & Molly. In case you’re interested, here’s a closeup of the background couple:

Closeup of the background couple

(I secretly composed my camera so exactly this would happen. I knew I could count on good ol’ reliable T-Bone.)

I’m still in the process of going through all of my wedding photos, but I couldn’t help but post this one up. It kept me howling with laughter for hours.