Must be a softball player thing.

Two years ago here, I wrote about the wedding of one of my favorite couples of all time, Stacey Rose and Dan Harris. Stacey is an accomplished softball player (she once struck out 15 players in a game while pitching for Furman University in the mid-Nineties) and now is an equally accomplished attorney. She and Dan met on an online dating service, Jdate.com, and were married during the peak of the cherry blossoms two years ago this month.

Laura Rubinchuk played softball for the University of Rochester. Two Saturdays ago, just as the cherry blossoms were blooming, she married Mitch Schwartz in a beautiful ceremony at the W Hotel in Washington. The couple met on...wait for it...match.com, a fact they joyfully shared with guests at their wedding via a copy of those first emails. (Mitch admirably mentions straight away that, "I am loyal.")

Whether it's the literal fast pitch or the dating slow pitch, I know that I really like these guys, just as I really liked Stacey and Dan before them. They are very much in love, very fun to be around, and always smiling. And Laura's got a great sense of humor. (Back in November, after I had vented that, after 27 years, I sometimes still get emails addressed to "Dear Photographer," Laura promptly sent me an email that read, "Dear Photographer: Please send contract.")

The other thing you need to know about Laura is that her family hails from Belarus. She speaks fluent Russian. Her dad is warm and funny, just as you would expect, and was very proud to wear his Father of the Bride baseball cap all day. My assistant Cliff and I chatted with Laura's mom in the hotel room about all things Belarusian. (Just as I chatted with Mitch's dad about growing up in the Bronx. Everyone comes from the Bronx, including my parents.)

Laura and Mitch were married at the W, which has become the happening hot spot in Washington. Whenever you're in a hotel that has bouncers just for the elevators, you know you're in a sought-after place. The reception was up on the roof, overlooking the White House and Treasury. It's one of the best views in D.C.

In fact, when Laura and Mitch saw each other for the very first time, the hotel arranged for them to do it on the rooftop, with the Washington Monument in the background. Beats the heck out of a hotel corridor!

After that, we stepped outside for a few family pictures. As usual, despite being surrounded by thousands of happy, photo-snapping tourists, the Park Police came right up to us and asked for a permit. At Freedom Plaza! We weren't anywhere close to a monument or a memorial. Just minding our own business on Pennsylvania Avenue. I pretended I had no clue about permits or weddings or photography and the officer let us go. Oh well, some things never change. (The joke, for me at least, was that two years ago, Stacey and Dan sat amidst thousands of cherry blossom revelers on the steps of the Jefferson and no one bothered us!)

I'm hoping someday Stacey and Laura can somehow hook up and swap softball and dating stories. It's a small world and you never know.

I promised I would have some pictures of Laura and Mitch up on the blog before their honeymoon ended. But I just noticed that Laura posted on Facebook that she was back to work today, so I'm a day late! Enjoy, guys!

TO SEE A MINI GALLERY OF PICTURES FROM THE WEDDING OF MITCH SCHWARTZ AND LAURA RUBINCHUK, CLICK HERE.

Take care guys. And speaking of some Russians I love, with the names Semin and Ovechkin, Let's Go Caps!

Matt

Another quickie little post for some engagement pictures.

Sarah and Nils met in the Cobble Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn and asked me to shoot some pictures there. I feel sheepish admitting that I haven't walked over the Brooklyn Bridge since I was a little kid. It's really a magical spot.

In 1935 Thomas Wolfe wrote a short story called "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" and I still remember its opening line: "Dere’s no guy livin’ dat knows Brooklyn t’roo an’ t’roo, because it’d take a guy a lifetime just to find his way aroun’ duh goddam town."

Well said.

Matt

A quickie post today, just so you could see one beautiful pic.

I see people come down to the cherry blossoms like the going to battle. Camouflage pants, two fanny packs, three tripods and full air support. They descend on the Tidal Basin like troops storming a position. But you don't need any of that. You just need good light.

Cheers,

Matt

Last night, in a crowded bar in Bethesda, eight lifelong baseball fans sat around a table and divided up our Nationals season tickets. It's an annual rite of spring, this doling out of parking passes and drawing of numbers from a hat. But it always reminds me that spring is officially here, regardless what the calendar says officially.

Our schedule goes very quickly from a sleepy winter's pace to non-stop shoots around Washington. But before we steamroll into spring, we wanted to take a moment and look back at some of favorite pictures from this past fall's portrait season. In the craziness around the holidays, these shoots never seem to make it onto the blog. But as with history, we believe it's always worthwhile to look backwards before marching forward. 

We're busy booking spring and summer commissions now. This little gallery shows what we do here at Matt Mendelsohn photography: no white backdrops, no Little Lord Fauntleroy dressing up, and no matching white shirts. We promise!

Please email us at info@mattmendelsohn.com to schedule your portrait.

A few things to remember:

Portrait sittings are $525. We offer 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 gift prints, as well as our legendary (at least we think so!) Mprints for larger sizes. Mprints are fiber-based, signed and dated prints which should be framed and hung on a wall. We offer framing services and are happy to help.

We believe strongly--more than ever, actually--that photography is a gift we leave to our children. In an age of camera phones and point-and-shoot cameras, it's important to keep future generations in mind. 

And now, some pictures...

I recently emailed Laura Sanders to let her know her blog entry was in the works and she responded, "Thanks so much for the update. We had such a wonderful time and can't wait to see the photos. We're still hoping we got a few 'holy kamole' worthy pictures." 

That last bit, a reference to an earlier post I had written, made me smile. There are indeed some of those moments, starting with the picture atop this blog right now. Laura and Brian Wyatt were married on New Year's Day in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the beautiful Keswick Hall, and I was hoping for a picture that captured that kind of crisp, mid-winter evening. And the second I shot this picture I knew I had. (I want to say that I said "Holy Kamole" but I think something a bit cruder might have come out instead.) That both bride and groom look like they stepped straight out of 1958, or out of the "Breakfast at Tiffany's" set, makes it all the better. Keswick does such a good job of channeling Thomas Jefferson's Virginia that it would be a shame to leave out the more recent past.

And now that I look at Brian and Laura's pictures, they seem to have that same look of excitement and love in every picture. Whether kissing under an arbor, playfully throwing the paper that packed her dress into the air, or staring at one another during their first dance, this couple looks like they are in love. And they picked the right place to show it.

Keswick is really a gorgeous spot for a wedding. Located just outside of town and with a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge, this inn oozes local flavor. Like all fine hotels, the devil is always in the details. A good hotel might greet its guests with a warm drink in the winter but Kewswick goes a step further. A pot of hot chocolate is always simmering on a heated stone, right there as you walk in. Just looking at it, like something an ancient traveler might be greeted with as he entered a tavern, warmed me up.

It's tiny little things like that one remembers about a hotel, not whether there's HBO in the rooms. Character matters.

But then Laura is the daughter of Martha and John Sanders, who came to talk with me earlier last year on their daughter's behalf, and I knew she had to have character. We had a wonderful meeting and I remember thinking something odd when they left. Many brides and grooms, products of a younger generation, want exactly the kind of photography I provide--documentary, photojournalistic coverage. But there are some parents who haven't been as exposed to this style as their children and they tend to be concerned about the more set-up aspect of the day. The family pictures, etc. But Martha and John got what I did perfectly and they weren't concerned about the latter so much as making sure that their daughter would have the real moments first and foremost.

(John, by the way, didn't mention that he had been president of the New York Islanders until I read it in the New York Times. As a hockey dad, not to mention someone who grew up not far from the Nassau Coliseum and its four consecutive Stanley Cups in the 1980's, I thought this was incredibly cool. But enough about the Islanders; Let's go Caps!)

Laura and Brian had a wonderful wedding. From their New Year's Eve rehearsal dinner, which featured toasts around a warm fireplace, to the day of their actual marriage, in which the first drop of rain started seconds after we were done taking photos outside, everything was perfect. No stress, good music and great friendship. As Laura's matron of honor related the story of how they met, two kids waiting to go to summer camp so many years ago, I smiled. It was all just so sweet. And as we drove away, ready to take on he rest of 2011, I said to my assistant Cliff, "Well, that was a really nice way to start the year.

And it was.

To see a mini gallery of images from the wedding of Laura Sanders and Brian Wyatt, click here.

Take care,

Matt