Farewell

Sorry to throw out this buzzkill to all of those contributors, dancers, and supporters of CCB, but the Wedding Issue has concluded.
It's time for us to enjoy our beautiful Fall weather and set assail on our various courses.




Charles and Karen!



I had a great time, but need to lose some weight.
Looking forward to seeing everyone around the holidays.

I mentioned this before but I do have these photos at greater resolution and lots of others so please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like some.

Round Due

L+C:

Site of Ceremony and Reception at Gainey Vineyards, accessible via Hayride.


Mrs McCaffrey, and the Bridal Party in thought


Its funny meeting cousins' cousin's while celebrating more cousins.


The diverse, unique and frankly weird California landscape never fails to impress. Being from Long Island the topography in CA is well appreciated and all the funky things that go along with it are just great, like the shrubs, the hawks and rocks formations. Morro Rock and Guadalupe Dunes were my favorite. Let alone, ocean is awesome as well.

J+B:

The Shisle is more familiar terrain for me, considering Steve and Lu have a house there and we visit every summer. Still a beautiful setting. The sunset made for a terrific golden hour, or as others persist 'magic hour.'

This is cousin Al in the middle. I haven't been able to get in touch with him since the wedding. I just get his agent who keeps telling me "he's busy."
Al's best man toast at the dinner was... well... it'll be pretty hard to beat.
Following a quota of funny stories he put Bobby's whistling talents on the spot, making him whistle for Jen. Of all songs in the world, Bobby picks "Bicycle Built for Two" who knew he would pick that? Well after Bob's recital, Al asks us to serenade them and tells us to look under our seat cushion lyrics to Bobs jingle. This was followed by a collective "Oh no he didn't."
Whereto Al responds during our ensemble with a "Hell yeah I did" while doing a lap inside the tent on his gift to Jen and Bobby. A Bicycle, built for two.
I was marveled. I heard one person fainted. If you read this Al, I miss you.


Decadent and delicious dinner with two long tables. To each section there own cheese ambassador.

Ca and Re showing how it gets done... and who brought this guy?

Round 1

Enough strategizing about how to write about these killer blowouts.
The point is Food + Family + Booze + Dance = Yay.

I had to make the file size smaller in order to upload these photos. Feel free to ask if you would like the original photo.

J+B:



Hey Sista's


Finally after a combined 4 hour and 3 day travel delay the Dunn's made it!




I haven't quite figured out the best way for night/dancing shots. I think I have the shutter speed and ISO settings down but its hard to focus. Hopefully I will figure it out soon.

L+C:



Christy took us to this awesome creekside BBQ/Pub place for some post wedding Tri-tip





I cant wait till either my sister brother or I get married, there would be an epic dance-off between Team Steve-0 and Danny Mac versus the Patton Ladies. On second thought it could get pretty ugly.

Bi-coastal Rave

Consider this the "cocktail hour" post of the wedding issue. The Santa Ynez valley and Shelter Island couldn't be more far apart. Both incredible places for incredibly unique throwdowns.
After a week of detox its hard to put these moments in the past, but I couldn't be happier for my family.

Jen and Bobby are a big basket full of bright ideas



Lauren + Clark with no sweat pulled off the wickedest party

Actually everything about both of them was perfect. Well except for one thing... stupid American Airlines, who tried to put a buzzkill on my sister and cousin's party wheels. If airlines were smart at all they would have sponsored these weddings, considering how fun they were and all the brilliant execution that went into them.

Wedding Blitz

Welcome to the Chocolate Covered Bacon Wedding Issue!



Weddings are fun, cousins are awesome. A cousins wedding is probably the wildest, craziest, best thing in the world.
We traveled to two corners of the great USA in the past six weeks to revel in matrimony, and celebrate new cousins.

Much more to come on the tale of these two epic bacchanalia.

Graphic Overload

I have been brainwashed by architecture. Everything we see is designed. Fonts, lineweights, and swatches program every billboard, packaging label, Espn score chart, and hot dog vendor.
As a designer we wanna be the best, if not then really really good when it comes to graphics and artistic expression. Personally, I often feel overwhelmed and nauseous. Cheese and rice, I even wonder what the spacing ratio is on the Helvetica bold label for the MTA Subway signs. Thanks architecture.



I mean how can I not get jealous of say this guy... heywookchan.com Hey's a good guy and student at WashU. He does everything. I claim music is a passion of mine, he makes it.

Also, I recently found the blog notcot.org via Jordys links. Its the conglomerate Meccah of cool stuff from the internets. If I didn't value my personal time I would probably go through every single one of those pages, picking things out saying "ooh cool Modern Minimalist" or "that's a nice color set I could use." How did I get this way?
Where does this get us? Maybe this is teaching me to not care so much about graphic stuff... (Which I should be doing in the first place.)



Simplifying things, I really enjoy just making stuff, like crafting furniture or as categorized 'Industrial design.' I take great comfort in the physical construction and the process of making. My friend Jono said to me once "drawing by hand is great because you are always working with the final output." Which I found quite, well relaxing really. Its less stressful when you have part of the end product right in front of you.
I have a number of ideas for building/making things, mostly keeping in the same spirit as my trusty (although could be more functional) Muffler Lamp.

In this wake of a graphic overload, its healthy to focus on design that has more depth than my 1/4-inch thick laptop screen.