In case you missed our announcement on May 7th, we’ve officially launched all our rebranding that we’ve been so eager to share!

We’ve moved and are now Brett & Jessica – Makers of Fresh Visual Goodness!!! We are beyond thrilled to be announcing this and have a blog post coming soon on the new blog with some juicy details behind the rebranding process that you do not want to miss.

Thanks to everyone for all the support and a VERY big thank you to our great friend and brilliant designer, Jaime Van Wart (ketchup-mustard.com) for the amazing work she put into bringing everything together. She is responsible for the design and coding of it all.

Now that the announcement has been made, you should go ahead and update your bookmarks, RSS and so on with our new site and blog links! If you aren’t already following us on Twitter (@brettarthur and @jessicadonar) and liking us Facebook, you should do that now!

Link to the new site: http://brettjessica.com

Link to the new blog: http://blog.brettjessica.com

Other links:
Brett & Jessica on Facebook
Brett on Twitter
Jessica on Twitter 
Jaime Van Wart – Portfolio
Jamie Van Wart – Twitter 

Anna and Alan are two hilarious, adventurous people in love and it made it a pleasure to spend an evening with them shooting their engagement session. It makes it all that more exciting to be a part of their wedding in June too! We feel like we learn valuable life tips and tricks from our couples, without them even knowing it. Anna and Alan’s is definitely to laugh more and fear not!

Brett & Jessica

We’ve been so fortunate to have such amazing couples. Chelsea and Corey are another perfect example of the loving, sweet and creative spirits we are so privileged to work with. Getting to know these two while doing their engagement session here in Raleigh was a blast as we knew it would be. We are really excited to be a part of their wedding endeavors and are looking forward to their wedding next month!

Brett & Jessica

Like we mentioned in the blog post for the other half of Shannon and Chip’s engagement, take notes. Whatever these two have going on, we fully support it. Their emotional connection and complete comfort with each other is what it’s all about, right? We are really looking forward to picking up the amazingness again in June at their wedding. It’s surely a treat working with these two.

On a side note, do continue to check back for a really marvelous announcement we’ll be making soon!

Brett & Jessica

Wanted to drop  a quick post on the blog for you all. We’ve been working away on getting the rest of our new rebranding wrapped up, but didn’t want to leave y’all out on this goodness! Shannon and Chip are absolute pros at being in front of the camera, so if you’re anything like us and get all awkward feeling in front of the camera, you’ll definitely want to take notes from these two. We promise you won’t want to miss the second half of this shoot!

Brett & Jessica

You know whats great about central North Carolina? We’ll tell you. The images above were taken December 30th, 2011 and you’d have no idea Anna and Adam had their wedding smack-dab in the middle of winter. You know what’s not so great about central North Carolina? We’ll tell you. The images above could of been taken in the blistering cold with a nice recipe of rain and snow. Luckily, Anna and Adam deserved an awesome day for their incredible wedding and that’s exactly what they got. It was hands down the best way to wrap up the 2011 weddings!

Annie and Gus are incredible human beings. Always fun to be around and always creating an atmosphere that feels worthy of tons of smiles and laughs. We recently did a quick engagement session with them, while they were in town for the holidays. They are both currently living in Los Angeles and their wedding will be in Durham. Annie is a Duke alum and originally from the great state of North Carolina. It was nice to see them again and to get them some straightforward engagement photos. We had actually done another engagement shoot with them awhile back, but as luck had it’s way, it poured and poured and thundered and lightninged all day. Now, we usually wouldn’t be so inclined to do a themed session, especially one that was trendy and meaningless, such as a certain fad that was going around for awhile. You see, the images below actually mean more to them than simply stumbling across a blog with a themed shoot and thinking, “hey, lets copy that”. Annie and Gus both work in the entertainment industry out in L.A. and Annie actually worked on UP. So, I would say that these accurately represent who they are and their interests. As it rained that day, we were able to really put our thinking caps on and make a really fun shoot happen. When the storm broke for a moment, we headed outside for a quick minute while we still had a little bit of daylight left. We headed back to our place and set up the second part of the shoot, the Indian Jones set, which we were really happy with. It was great to see how excited they  got to do something that really related to them.

Fate, destiny, luck, serendipity, etc. Whatever it is that you believe brings two people together to spend the rest of their lives together is what these images represent. Emily and David are two people from two completely different places and even a few decades ago, probably would have never met because of the physical distance between their hometowns. What’s funny now, is that where you grew up or even where you currently live cannot stop someone from meeting their soulmate. For example, Emily and David met in France. Emily was over there for school and is originally from Hendersonville, NC but currently lives in San Francisco and will be moving to Raleigh, where we live, in July. David is originally from Ireland and was picked up by a French rugby team to play professionally over there and will be moving to Raleigh with Emily in July. It is crazy to think that their life plan involved all these things to play out at the right time and location.

What gets me even more is that I (Brett) grew up in Hendersonville, NC and graduated high school the same year as Emily. We lived in the same small town for years, had multiple mutual friends and never once met. It was only after searching for a photographer that she found us, by doing a Google search and no where on our site or anything does it mention Hendersonville, NC. It’s really amazing and sort of mind-boggling how things play out sometimes. In this case, it makes perfect sense because these two are absolutely perfect for one another.

This wedding was full of awesome. Awesome because Tori and Sean are two awesome friends of ours who like being awesome. Some would probably think “working” at a friends wedding would be a bummer, but we wouldn’t of had it any other way. Hands down, this day was one of the funnest days. We almost included about 80 more reception images, but didn’t want to rub the awesome in everyone’s face who wasn’t there.

As you probably noticed, they had their wedding ceremony at an amazing location, which had just opened it’s newly redone space. The Visual Art Exchange in downtown Raleigh was a perfect fit for these kids. Afterwards, we headed over to Marbles Kids Museum for the party where Mr. Miles Holst played a perfect soundtrack to the evening.

For more awesome, be sure to check out Sean’s newly opened Tasty Beverage Co. store in The Depot in downtown Raleigh for good liquids and good times.

As you can see, Emily and Paul absolutely nailed this shoot. They are two of the most fun to be around people we’ve met and are really looking forward to their wedding!

We shot in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia near the location of their wedding and we couldn’t of asked for a better day. It was beautiful. Crazy, but serious story… When we got out to the Swift Creek Reservoir to shoot, a team of divers where loading into the water and they also had a few motored boats running, which is not allowed, so we wondered what was going on and as I recall it, it was very quiet out there when the motors were shut off. We all just assumed it was some sort of training, but later when we asked a member of the Swift Creek Rescue team, they told us a man had crashed his plane into the reservoir minutes before we pulled up. The man flying the plane ended up with less than critical injuries. What’s remarkable about it, is that the pilot decided to dive his plane into the water rather than attempting to land it on dry land to avoid injuring anybody but himself. Apparently, that is much more dangerous than trying to pull off a landing on the ground. So, my hats off to that man.