VEGAS

So every year, to keep ourselves inspired and on the cutting edge of photography, we travel to Las Vegas to join 20,000 other photographers from around the globe for the world's largest photography convention. During 5 amazing and exhausting days of convention we get to rub shoulders with the best of the best and get to know wedding and portrait photographers just like us who might be from Japan, South Africa, the UK, or New Zealand!

This year started off INSANE with our fights canceling 2 days in a row.... I was so ready to pull my hair out! But the upside of this was we made some friends at the airport sympathizing with the other stranded passengers. Nothing spurs on bonding like combined aggravation for a flight company. HA!

Wandering the show floor checking out hundreds of companies.

When we finally made it to Vegas we spent 3 whirlwind days attending classes, taking mountains of notes, walking what feels like a MILLION miles, drinking way to much coffee, attending awards banquets and product expos. Now we CAN'T WAIT to show all of our wonderful brides the products and ideas that we are bringing back to the South!

SAN FRANCISCO

Although Mary Ann has visited the Bay Area before, for Kara and I this was our first time seeing the city and all of its sights up close. This part of our trip was purely vacation, because every time we fly to Vegas for our convention, we feel that since we are already so close to the west coast that we need to go ahead and make the final distance to visit somewhere beautiful. Each year we try to keep it different.... one year it was driving to the Grand Canyon and then down to Phoenix... then another we drove west through Death Valley to the coast and then followed hyw 1 from Moro Bay to Monterey Bay. This year we struck on San Francisco and the wine country!

Day 1: We mostly just wandered around the city, grabbing local pizza, riding the Cable Cars, and just shopping around.

The view all the way down to Fisherman's Wharf.

Day 2: We toured the city via shuttle from the Golden Gate up to the Twin peaks.... then after dark we waited with 500,000 other visitors from around the world for the Chinese New Year's parade.

This is one of the top 10 Chinese parades in the world!

Day 3: We wandered up into Muir Woods (Enchanted Forest if I've ever seen one), then Sausalito and then up into Sonoma (better known as Wine Country).