• The Latest News

    4/28/16:FLASH SALE THROUGH THIS WEEKEND!! Happy Spring, everyone!! We recently held a 30% off Flash Sale for Gallery Wrapped and Flat Canvases, and guess what?? FLASH SALE IS BACK!!! Contact us for more info at info{at}avesphotographicdesign.com.

    Congratulations, Newly Engaged Lovelies!! Yay! It seems like everyone is getting engaged lately, and we are very excited to start hearing from all of you who are new "fiancés"! Just as a reminder: If you have previously contacted us about a date, we only hold dates with the contract and wedding deposit. The first person who submits their contract and deposit will receive that date.

    Like Our Facebook Page! It'll make us feel validated.

    2016/2017 Weddings: now! We REALLY want to be your photographers {ESPECIALLY if you read our blog}. We DO still have upcoming openings that are sooner than a year away (so definitely contact us!). Remember: we won't tell if you don't have the ring yet. Heehee....

  • Our Work

    Hello there.

    Thank you for visiting our blog. I am Lauren Aves, and my husband Will and I are Aves Photographic Design. About five years ago (what?!? Not sure how that happened so fast), we moved our studio to 4909 Camp Bowie Blvd in Fort Worth, TX, (soon after which our photography business sort-of exploded; yay! This is only thanks to our God and Savior for giving us EVERYTHING; it's so obvious-how could I not state it before?), and we love our home in Dallas/Fort Worth.

    Contact us if you have any questions at all. We love new ideas, and we are so blessed to be able to work with people who really "get" the kind of work we do. We can't wait to meet you. Thank you all for this enormous blessing, and stay beautiful!

    Now scroll down for the REAL stories! Bookmark us and check back often.

    Portrait Availability: Due to our weekend wedding schedule, we only accept portrait sessions on weekdays. We keep all upcoming weekends open for weddings and the events that surround them. Our portrait schedule books up at around 4-8 weeks out (further in advance for popular portrait times of the year), so we recommend that you schedule your session as soon as you have decided you would like us as your photographers in order to have the best selection of dates.

    XOXO, Lauren and Will

Kadie and Greg’s Scrumdidlyumptious Day! {i.e. THEIR WEDDING!! EEEEEE!}

Where do I even begin?? We LOVE Kadie and Greg. We love a lot of people, but we REALLY love Kadie and Greg. I think I want to follow them around and photograph them every day just to soak up some of the happiness and joy that they exude when they are together. Plus, I mean Kliff (serious dog-model-extraordinaire). Enough said.

We love them and their families so much, that when the idea was presented to us that we’d be able to test out this new form of blogging via “Spark Storytelling” (meaning, I saw it on a Facebook ad targeted at me, decided that meant that Adobe was officially and formally asking me to make one because of their love of our work, and just took it upon myself to do one-teehee…hee..e.  The other way does SOUND better, though, doesn’t it?), we knew exactly whose wedding to start with (*More logistics below for any fellow wedding and/or small business vendors who would like us to create one for them. I mean, HOW much cooler could this beautifully magazine-like phone and tablet-designed blogging system get, right? I know. IknowIknowIknooooooow!!!). The Spark Pages can be time-consuming, yes (especially when trying to find the vendors and their websites to be sure and add in in case we can’t remember who they were a couple of months later), but our old blog style (which we will probably still do from time to time….Although as I’m sure you can tell, our blog is the last thing on our list when we’re deep into the seasons-o-the-weddings, so many times we have to skip over weddings that we LOVE in hopes that we’ll be able to come back to them! And other times, we are holding out for something special, like D Weddings, Southern Weddings, The Knot Texas, and of course our all-time favorite, 360 West Weddings. Plus, you know, our new DFW LookBook Magazine (still an e-issue only for now), which is always one of the ones we save our VERY best stuff for!).

……………….

This “Wedding Essay ” idea has been brewing around in the back of my mind ever since I saw that Adobe started doing these amazingly-fabulous{ly amazing! Did I say that already?}, BEAUTIFUL storytelling pages for professional photographers and really, anyone who loves pretty storytelling with images as your main focus while being able to scroll, tap, and click from your phone or tablet without any weird desktop-designed websites that never did truly work. We are going to call them “Photo Essays” because to us, they are so much more than a blog (you get to scroll around on your PHONE, y’all! And your tablet. And whatever else fits into your hand. Amazing, I know. Also, Adobe just came out with an even NEWER version right beforehand, so even more the reason to get to play with this. You may start seeing a lot more of these beauts in the future!

[….And, yes, we had previously been stuck in the good ol’ 2007-2010 era of websites for quite some time, and the OCD side of me was about ready to dry heave any time I saw our oldest site that is still somehow at www.avesphotographicdesign.com. (Please don’t laugh. It was 2007, so basically, that’s like 1934 in dog years. Or something…..]

….So if you’d like to relish in those 2007-2010 {but really through 2016-ugh!} “Glory Days”, as we like to not-so-affectionately call them, by all means, do it NOW, because that pink texture-y site is about to go buh-bye :).

 

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BECAUSE…..SOME BIG NEWS IS COMING! (For us, anyway. Our beautiful new website is finally alllllmost ready {we just got the mobile version back from Emma and Josh. who specialize not only in Wedding Photography, but are also avid Showiteers (basically meaning that they know everything to know about Showit.com and then some!). They have both answered all of my million questions a hundred-thousand times over, even though what I paid them to do was to just simply convert our new website to mobile, but they must have known that I’m OCD and that I need help when it comes to not shutting up. Most of the time. When there’s not wedding cake or another wedding-style sweet keeping me from chattering on.

 

We are SO very excited to share these with anyone who hasn’t yet seen this on my (Lauren Aves’s) Personal Facebook Page. And honestly, if you haven’t followed us there yet, you’re in for a treat because you maaaay even get more wedding-and-photography-related fun.

- Two more administratorious Facebook (yes, I made that word up) things: Our Business Facebook Page (which you should ABSOLUTELY also follow, because we post flash sales, regular sales, and just all kinds of tips and goodies on it throughout the year) is Aves Photography on Facebook.

- However, because Facebook won’t let us have a mapped-out location without also keeping the name “Aves Photographic Design” {**more on that ridiculousness at the end of this, too}, we additionally have a page called Aves Photographic Design on Facebook. Yes, we know we can merge the two pages. Yes, we’ve tried. And yes, that try has been denied multiple times because “4909 Camp Bowie doesn’t exist in Fort Worth”. Or at least, that’s what they tell us. Hence all of the mail mishaps-lol.

TLDR: Just go click on those three pages and follow/like all of them, and maybe you’ll get 1/3 or 1/1110th of what we actually post unless we pay! Bahaha!

 

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…Not that I’m bragging. But sort-of… ;). Because, let’s just be honest. We {Professional Photographers as a whole, not just ME, or anything like that! Most of the time…} are a braggy bunch of artists, us photographers, and if we don’t brag, we just disappear. Therefore, you must cheerlead for us and make us feel special. It’s all part of the process, daaahlang! ;)

 

Click on the image below and enjoy from your phone, ipad, tablet/computer/whatever! It’s got to be silly, how excited I am about these things. Silly, I tell ya! ;) But when you go to it, you will see why! All of the vendors who we love are also included in this! :)

Kadie & Greg

XOXO,

Lauren and Will

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Maggie and Stephen | Sneak-Peek!

Here is a Sneak-Peek from Maggie and Stephen’s beautiful wedding at Thistle Springs Ranch in Cleburne! Ahhh-I LOVED the light we got for these, and the day was absolutely magical, thanks to all of the hard work and planning that went into every aspect of this. A HUGE thanks goes out to Julia Paur, their phenomenal coordinator, for everything she did that day.

 

LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!

We are adding all of the vendors to this post when we get back from our shoot this evening….We get to go to a pretty Bridal Session now, and I couldn’t be happier that the rain stayed away and that it turned out to be a beautiful day today! :) :) YEEEEEE!!!!

XOXO,

Lauren and Will

PS-Coming up next, Andrea and Joel, and then Amanda and Parker!!!! :) :)

 

Our Beautiful USB Drives and Wedding Image Packaging and Delivery! :)

Hola, loyal blog readers! We are gearing up to post about a million weddings and sessions that we’ve been editing up left and right this Spring, so I’m first excited to share our newest wedding and portrait USB Drives that are included with all of our upcoming weddings and portraits (the ones in which the files are purchased on USB, of course! Some of our sessions include digital downloads only, while all of the images in our wedding packages officially include these beauties now! So if you’ve booked your wedding with us and haven’t yet received a USB Drive, you’ll be excited to get these pretty lil’ thangs! ;)).

We’ve been looking for the best place to get the highest quality USB drives for our clients that also show our brand on them, and we found the perfect USB Drives from USB Memory Direct! For weddings, we usually use the 16GB Wooden USB Drives (more than one are normally needed to fit all of the USB Drives that it takes to hold these babies!). For portrait sessions, we go with the 8GB USB Drives, although all portrait sessions do not already include the images on USB and are normally purchased within a wedding package or a portrait package for the best value. Now, having finally found the place to get them the fastest and with the best quality, we have decided to do all of our USB Drives for our clients from these wonderful people! Check them out, photographers and anyone else who needs excellent branding, y’all!! :)

For anyone who would like to contact them, you can email [email protected] for more information and he’ll get you to the right person. They are so great to work with!

They are able to do all kinds of branded USB drives, so to go with our brand the best we decided on these squared pine-colored wooden drives with our logo in two colors. They have a magnetic closure to hold the wooden cap to the body of the USB drive. We now deliver these to our clients in these cute little bags we got on Etsy, in white unmarked boxes from U-Line, with some of this wooden shaving stuffing shown in these images to make it look all bird-and-nest-like!

I know. I’m a little too excited about our USB’s, and if you’re a client of ours recently you may have even already received these as we just got our most recent shipment in and promptly used them all up! Haha! ;) But aren’t they PRETTY????? I think so.

 

Now, get ready to check back SOON for some beautiful new wedding images….

….Starting with Joel and Andrea’s gorgeous wedding at The Laurel! EEEEEEEEEE!!!!! Cannot WAIT to share our favorites from this wonderful and special weekend!!! :)

XOXO,

Lauren and Will

PS-Here’s our first lil’ sneak for that. A Sneak-Peek for the Sneak-Peek!! :) We LOVE that sparkler heart! Ever since doing one ourselves back in high school and college, we have loved incorporating these into our weddings when our clients have Sparklers for their Grand Exit! Woo-Hoo!!

 

“I’m Gonna Marry You!”

 

…Is what Tyler adorably shouted out to Katy at the end of his goodnight Rehearsal Dinner Toast the night before the wedding.

It was decidedly {by me and all of the other girls-and probably also guys-in the room} the best and sweetest, most perfect proclamation he possibly could have given.

And he was right.

He did marry her.

Here is an extra-large Sneak-Peek of our favorites from their wedding day….So far. :)

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I would be silly to go on without mentioning Lauren Carrillo from Something to Celebrate. She coordinated this gorgeous and perfect day, and she and her team were AMAZING. AmazingAmazing. Yeah. So you should just know that. Call her, right now, Houston brides!! (Pretty sure I already said something like this in the last post, but I am SERIOUS, people!! Love her!!)

…..And More Wedding Peeps:

- Dr. Suzanne Reedstrom, Officiant. Because she was so wonderful and amazing that day!!

- Dress: Romona Keveza from Joan Pillow in Houston

- Makeup Texas

- Maxit Flower Design

- Cakes by Gina

- Lakeside Country Club Houston

- Memorial Drive United Methodist Church Houston

- TOP Band

- Nathan Willis Wedding Films

The preciousness is on overload right now!!!

 

…I think that Cathedral-length veils are probably what make the world go round….

Father/Daughter Pre-Ceremony moment, right before they walked down the aisle.

Mother/Son Pre-Ceremony moment. Not planned for both of them to have such sweet moments at the exact same time…they just did.

Peeking through the crack in the door….

Air kiss!!! I think that this is a classic face for this now-Wackman-family-famous photograph, Tyler! You should make many more of these types of photos for Katy throughout the rest of your days together! I think she’d like that.

And now the real kiss, as soon as they turned the corner after walking back down the aisle.

There are so many of these that I love….So I just kept adding them in to this post!

Pretty sunlight through the veil. But more importantly, HOW HAPPY ARE THEY?!?!?! ADORABLE, guys!!!!!

Here are some of the pretties from Lakeside Country Club that evening….

I could totally eat this cake UP.

A new one for the back of the bride and groom’s chairs: Satin ribbons and beautiful, simple greenery. Gorgeous!!

This was Katy and Tyler seeing their reception for the first time, before the doors to the ballroom opened.

And then, as if the day could possibly GET any better, God gave us THIS light!

Here are a bunch of favorites that are from their Bride/Groom “Romantics” that we took before Katy and Tyler went back to the Cocktail Hour.

YES!!! Perfection!

These are getting put onto facebook RIGHT NOW. For tagging and joke-making purposes, of course. So don’t disappoint, friends of Katy and Tyler. I know you have it in you.

I think there’s a bride somewhere in there…

Awwww! Sweet!!!

I already posted the best one of these three, but right next to it were these two beauties. So, duh, of COURSE I had to grab them, too!

My favorite is the faces they make at each other on the left…

There’s going to be a lot of this kind of stuff….

And this….

There are even a few more where this came from on my personal Facebook page, too! Facebook has been all anti-tagging-for-the-business-pages these days (but we still post stuff on ours too, so do us a favor and like us-if-you-like-us, y’all!), so we’ve been posting most of our Facebook images on my personal page. Yeah, Facebook. Told you! What.

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Katy and Tyler, we loved getting to be a part of your wedding. You guys are seriously the best and we can’t say enough how much we love you both!! Now, get ready for some pretty hilarious Reception photos when your wedding gallery is posted, because they are SO funny. And sweet. You will love. I’m positive about this.

We can’t wait!!

XOXO,

Lauren (and Will!)

Ashley - Hi Lauren and Will! Your blog is SO amazing! You two are anointed with the gift of capturing beautiful, loving, and joyful moments! I want you guys to know how much I appreciate you posting these gorgeous photos. I’m getting married in a little under a year; May 1st is the big day. It was truly an experience with the Lord to view the photos of Katy and Tyler’s wedding. He is so faithful! My venue looks a lot like the gorgeous country club that Katy and Tyler celebrated in. And my veil is going to be cathedral-length, too! It was beautiful to see the reverence you had for the ceremony, staying outside the church until it was over! That was important for me to see, since I too am going to get married in my beloved church. Thank you guys so much, only God knows how much this blog means to me. XOXO Ashley :)
P.S. I wish I lived in Houston so you guys could shoot my wedding! But, thankfully, a family friend is going to take some amazing photos for us!
GREAT JOB! <3