Meet Linar, Elena, and of the course the bride Clara (and I’m the last person on the right).

Now, meet Linar, our 2009 bride…

Elena, our 2012 bride…

and Clara, our 2013 bride.

To our 3 amazing couples – may your love and happiness grow with each passing year!

We’re excited that Snug Harbor chose a bunch of our photos for the advertisement. The  images with couples in them are ours. Gorgeous pictures to show off a gorgeous wedding venue!

Snug Harbor has beautiful gardens, architecture and an amazing Great Hall with its vault-like ceilings and we try to bring out these wonderful features in our wedding photography.  If you have us shoot your wedding there, we’ll capture photos that are good enough to use in magazine ads.  Well, to be honest, we will try to do this regardless of where you get married.

My lens was not wide enough to capture the dramatic clouds passing over Manhattan. Taking a photo like this doesn’t capture the whole story of this wicked and evil Spring weather buster of a storm.

I was able to capture more of its grand entrance by taking several photos and stitching them together to make these panoramic pictures.

To capture more of the dramatic sky, I also created a multi-layered panoramic. Meaning I not only joined photos together from the left and right, I also added an additional layer of photos taken of the evil-looking clouds above and voila – meet Mr. Gray Sky!

This trick also allows us to get the wide shots without the distortion you get if we used a wide fisheye lens. We’ve used this same photography technique to create some amazing landscapes at weddings. So if Mr. Gray Sky shows up at your wedding as an uninvited guest, no worries, we will make the best of it. We enjoy capturing dramatic gray clouds as much as we enjoy capturing beautiful blue skies. One of our panoramic photos is currently featured in the Summer issue of Manhattan Bride magazine. More to come on the Manhattan Bride feature!

Now, to cut to the chase.

The 1st and 2nd place winners were neck and neck with the winner ahead by only a few votes. This year’s winner shows that they can have their cake and win it too at The Brownstone. Congratulations to Jen & Vincent for winning 1st place!

Our 2nd place winner was close, but we understand that it’s tough to compete with cake.  Congratulations to Katie and Dane with this beautiful photo in the Ivy Tunnel at Snug Harbor.

Our 3rd place winner was an emotional moment captured at Imani & Ostus’ wedding at Water’s Edge in LIC.

Congratulations to all the winners!  We look forward to another year of capturing all the little stories that happen at each wedding. From fun cake cutting to emotional wedding vows, they are all equally important to us and we are so honored to be be able to capture them all.

Weddings are celebrations of a couple’s love for one another. Now is the time for our annual “sharing the love” contest where we share the love that we capture in our wedding photos! We took a few photos from each of our 2012 New Jersey & New York weddings and made a slide show. When you have hundreds of beautiful photos from each wedding, selecting just a few is not an easy task. We invite you to look at the show below and vote for your favorite image! You’ll see a number at the bottom of each image. After you enjoy the show, please make a comment telling us which image number gets your vote!

To be fair to everyone and prevent ballet box stuffing, we will only count one vote per valid email address. Don’t worry, you can also vote by clicking on these links to pages on Facebook and Google+. Each “like” and each comment on Facebook also counts as a vote. For all you Google+ users, every +1 and every comment counts as a vote as well. So, if you have an email address, a Facebook account and a Google+ account, you can vote 5 times!

The 3 couples with the most votes will win $400 in prizes and big time bragging rights. Starting today, you have until 11:59PM EST on March 6th, 2013 to cast your votes. The newlyweds with the most votes from all three mediums, our blog, Facebook and Google+, will receive Funico Studios credits that can be used to purchase any of our products (for example, gallery wraps, album upgrades or parent albums). The couple who has a photo with the most votes will receive a $250 credit. The 2nd place winner will receive a $100 credit and the 3rd place winner will receive a $50 credit. Sorry, but we will only give 1 prize per couple. Yes, that means one couple cannot win the entire $400 in prizes. Good luck to all of our amazing couples! We will post the results on March 11th, 2013.

The gorgeous bride incorporated splashes of her favorite color into the wedding. Can you figure out what it is?

After applying a splash of her favorite color to her lips, she was ready.

She had the shoes,

the dress,

and the cutest flower girl you can imagine, her daughter Mikayla.

After Mom helped her with the dress, Jess was on her way to the church…

.. where Leo was waiting. Saying one last prayer before the ceremony.

Mikayla looked like she enjoyed her ride down the aisle in her decked-out wagon.

The couple happily said their vows in front of their friends & family. We think Leo was thinking “hallelujah, my prayers have been answered!”

Mikayla was thrilled to see her name in the wedding program.

They had Saint James the Great, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, overseeing the wedding from the stained glass windows while James the Great Photographer captured the ceremony with his camera.

Congrats to the new Mr. & Mrs. Sacco!

After the ceremony, we headed to Snug Harbor to take wedding photos on their beautiful grounds.

It wasn’t our idea for the wedding party to “moon” Jess & Leo. It was all their idea and it gave everyone a good laugh (us included!)

We had to get a picture of the newlyweds in the stunning Great Hall, especially since it was lit up with Jess’ favorite color. Have you figured out what it is yet?

After making their grand entrance…

they had their first dance.

Then, they partied the night away with their friends & family.

Congratulations to Jess & Leo! We have spent quite a bit of time together. First, shooting your engagement photos on the hottest day of the year. Then, a maternity shoot. And now, this PURPLICIOUS wedding! On all of these shoots, we’ve noticed how the love you have for each other shines bright from within each of you. Thank you for allowing us to capture these important moments in your new life together.

The annual awards program recognizes the top five percent of wedding photographers in New York in the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism. While many industry awards are given by the host organization, the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards® winners are determined solely based on reviews from real newlyweds and their experiences.

To our newlyweds – thanks so much for your trust & kind words!

To our 2013 bride-to-be’s – we look forward to helping make your wedding day fun & easy and capturing memories for you to share and laugh to again & again for years to come!

Marisa recently said the following about us on WeddingWire:

Simply amazing. We looked at a number of photographers’ portfolios before deciding on Funico, and I cannot express how happy we are with our decision to go with Alice and James. Even though I knew that Alice and James’ style was exactly what we were looking for, I was still completely blown away by the photos and slideshow they provided us from our wedding. They managed to capture our wedding more perfectly than I could have ever imagined. Highly, highly recommended.

Thank you so much, Marisa, for the kind words. You & Michael were so relaxed and easygoing, you’d be a pleasure for any wedding photographer to photograph!

Our 2 favorite wedding photos from the day. Of course, one has Marisa’s effervescent smile front & center.

First, Marisa & Michael got ready for their wedding at the Westin Governor Morris…

and then off they went to the Stone House to get married & celebrate.

We did the horah at our own wedding even though neither of us is Jewish. When James first suggested it, I said to him “are you sure, I don’t want to offend anyone by borrowing their custom.” Well, James googled it and found out that it was the international dance of celebration. What better way to celebrate then!

Congrats again to Marisa & Michael. Wishing you many years of happy and loving moments together!

Happy holidays!  Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus (festival for the rest of us!)

This is our first Christmas tree as a family.  James has been spending a lot of time making it beautiful (decorating it, watering it every day, choosing cute little houses for the bottom of the tree, etc.).  Our daughter, Lauren, and I are very lucky.  We didn’t do any work and yet, we have this beautiful tree to enjoy!