Today was Arianna’s Bat Mitzvah (the coming of age for a Jewish person). She did a wonderful job leading the religious service and reading from the torah. Later she was able to have a party at the Seville.
The Torah Arianna read
Arianna loves to dance and the party theme reflected that.
Can you guess what her favorite color is?
Congratulations to Rachel on her Bat Mitzvah. It is always fun to photograph a Bar/Bat Mitzvah instead of a wedding for a change. After the religious portion is finished, it is time to party. And it is something to see a herd of 13 year old kids celebrating. They play all sorts of games hosted by the DJs. KC from Spinnin Discs was in great form and really had the kids going.
KC and Roberta
KC and Eva
Mazel Tov to Samantha who celebrated her Bat Mitzvah in Milwaukee last Saturday. It was a nice quiet affair. Well quiet if you consider there were at least thirty 12-14 year old girls running around.
Samantha at the Torah
Practicing
Samantha
Michah entertaining the girls
Today, was a little different paced for me. I had the great honor to photo document Shira’s Bat Mitzvah. I’m told her name means “song” in Hebrew. Anyway, her mom is a cantorial soloist and Shira did a great job herself. Rather than being held in a temple, the ceremony was at Carnivale (BTW, check out their website. It is one of the best I’ve seen in a while). We started upstairs and then we moved into another room for the party. It was truly a unique event and the food was great. If you need a location for a rehearsal dinner (or even a wedding), I would recommend this place!
From the outside, it does not look too big, but looks are deceiving!
The religious service was held upstairs. All of the rooms are painted similar to this!
These were the fried banannas and cheese. Wow, did they taste good!
Chocolate desert. Do I need to say anything?
Well here we are in October and just about ready for Halloween. It is hard to believe that it is just a couple of weeks away. We’ve already got the kids costumes but, I’ll try to talk about that when we are close to the actual holiday. Meanwhile I manage to fall farther and farther behind. It feels like I’m so snowed under, I can’t find the snow blower. Hey Rick, please send me a plow or two or yours! As it stands now, I have two weeks without any events scheduled. So I hope to dig myself out of this hole over the next three weeks before my next event.
This weekend I extend a “Mazel Tov” to Daniel Charous for celebrating his Bar Mitzvah. I photographed his Bar Mitzvah portraits Friday Morning at B’Nai Tikvah. Here he is still studying for Saturday. While I was not there to see Daniel, everybody says he did great!
Saturday, I spent with Sarah and Jeremy at Prairie Landings Golf Course for the wedding ceremony and reception. It was a beautiful location. They really did a great job with the landscaping at this venue. Unfortunately, it was windy most of the day. As you can see, the matron of honor, Anne Marie, had to hold Sarah’s veil out of the way during the ceremony. Later on we had a great sunset.
When I was talking to Cindy, one of the wedding coordinators at Prairie Landings, she told me this part of the building was over 100 years old. When I heard that it just reinforced my idea to take a photo of Sarah and Jeremy in front of the building and “age” the photo. So here is a quick attempt at the process. I still need to work on it a little bit but I like the concept.
I concluded the weekend by meeting up with Daniel and his family for the family party to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah at Maggiano’s. If you’ve never been there you don’t know what you are missing. They are a “Lettuce Entertain You” restaurant and as such they uphold the standards seen in all of the other LEY establishments. The party itself was a little bit of a reunion as I was with some of these same folks a couple weeks ago to photograph the Bar Mitzvah of one of Daniel’s cousins.
Later in the day, I was out photographing the engagement session for Lance and Megan who are getting married at Starved Rock next June. They are another one of my couples who really like the outdoors. Therefore, I took them out to Stone Prairie for their engagement session. Despite having been out there several times this year, the change in season, creates a totally different look/feel to their images.
