Angie and Tom's Wedding at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden, Los Angeles

Although I've been to the United States several times, this was my first trip to California. My excitement was slightly tempered by the fact that I had shoots booked either side of Angie and Tom's wedding so rather than turning the trip into a holiday as I normally would I could only manage four days over there. I did get to go to Hollywood though and went to Muscle Beach by accident (don't ask), although sadly there weren't any muscles around at the time, still I suppose it saved me from feeling inadequate. Anyway, about more important things like the wedding.

Angie got ready with her family at the Hyatt Regency in Annaheim, which is just around the corner from Disneyland, in a lovely room looking over the front of the hotel. As it turned out the hotel was hosting a huge Asian wedding that day and we were treated to a view of hundreds of brightly coloured guests arriving, music playing, horse and carriage and all manner of traditional celebrations just below our window. It sort of felt as though it had been put on specially to get us all in the mood, but wonderful though the Hyatt Regency is I think that even their exceptional customer service wouldn't have stretched quite that far!

The wedding took place at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden at California State University, Long Beach. The ceremony is performed on a bridge over a stream running into the lake and Angie's beautiful pink handmade couture wedding dress by Federica Bruno was perfect for the venue, standing out and blending with the landscape at the same time. The garden itself is amazing, with plenty of sheltered shadowy spots as well as long sweeping landscape style views. You even get to feed the ornamental carp after the ceremony which gets the jumping and rolling around, great fun.

After a couple of hours we moved on to the wedding reception at Huntington Beach, which gave us a great opportunity for messing around on the sand and under Huntington Pier in the late afternoon and early evening light, in fact they had so much fun that we all went back over to the beach at sunset for more photographs and the a wander around the streets at night.

Angie and Tom had an amazing day and what I got to see of Los Angeles certailny lived up to my expectations, a great location for a destination wedding. You can find out more about weddings at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden here: http://web.csulb.edu/~jgarden and if you are interested in unique couture dresses you can get in touch with Federica Bruno through her website: http://www.federicabruno.com