This Week in Funny Bunny… Dirty Liar Edition!

Posted January 28, 2016 at 8:00 am

I promised you blog posts over half a year ago, and so, instead, I didn’t post at all! Sigh… I’ll be doing my yearly facelift on the site over the next few weeks, and, of course, picking up where I left off – the second half of Megan and Devin’s Pi Day wedding. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year! Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up entirely with the blog posts in the next few months.

But! Before I inundate you with all the beautiful photos I’ve been a part of creating in the past year, I thought I would serve up the “This Week in Funny Bunny: Vol. Dirty Dirty Liar She Never Writes Her Blog Posts” edition. Prepare for a HUGE essay, we’re covering almost 7 months here! It was my busiest season yet with Funny Bunny, and you’ll see that in the blog posts. However, it’s also been a huge year for me and for James, my fiancé. We always knew it would be. You may remember James from our internet famous Legend of Zelda proposal (http://funnybunnyphoto.com/2015/06/09/the-legend-of-zelda-engagement-proposal-james-natalie/). Our plan? To hit the big three in one year – wedding, house, baby! As you’ll find out, we’re getting pretty close!

Anyway, even if my iPhone photos appear to be 100% photos of virtual pets I’ve raised in the last year, while I worked back to back weddings in August of last year, James and I began our house search. Our apartment lease was up in November, so we knew we needed out, and it’s super tricky to get rabbits on leases because they’re considered “exotic” animals. We only got into our last apartment on a technicality. While we were conducting our house search, we also traveled to my home state of Virginia for our engagement session…:

Captured by the talented Stephanie Messick, who will also be photographing my wedding day. I love this photo, probably, more than all the other photos. Stephanie asked us to run toward each other and, James being James, decided to run right past me, so my natural reaction was to try and hit him over and over as he passed. Sigh!

Stephanie also captured other beautiful photos of us together:

But my life with James is full of unexpected hilarity, and that first photo just captures it perfectly.

During that vacation, after 5 different offers, someone accepted our offer on a house! This is nothing short of amazing in the Bay Area, which is flooded with all cash offers and no contingencies, so we felt really blessed. Closing took a little bit longer than we expected, but in October (another fully booked month for Funny Bunny!), we moved into our new home! What literally happened – I left my apartment in the morning and I went to this wedding:

And then I drove home to our new house! It was pretty amazing, my wonderful James just orchestrated the whole move. Sure, we’re still not unpacked at all, but it’s still pretty magical to leave all your stuff in one place in the morning, and find it all some place different at night.

You’d think that would be enough, but after I finished up my season, I started getting this…itch. And, well. I did this:

And you know I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to get professional photos taken of that, too!

Photo credit to Juniper Spring Photography – she’s another Bay Area photographer, so if you love this…! I still haven’t seen the rest of the photos, but these are from the preview she sent over. 🙂

Dyeing my hair has been part of a transformation process this year, which I won’t get into in this post, but it deeply affects my business. The long and short of it is that I’m 30 now, guys. I mean, I’m still a baby to a lot of people, and I’m old to other people, but in my mind, 30 years old is just too old to NOT dye my hair because I’m afraid someone won’t like it or that someone will say something mean to me. I’m ready to be me and to keep discovering what being “me” means.

How does this relate to my business? Well, I’ve run it under a lot of assumptions over the years, “a business MUST be run this way” “all the other photographers are doing this, I need to do it too” etc etc. I’m done, guys. I’m just so done with it. I’m going to run my business the way that feels completely right to me, and it’s going to be a great improvement for all of you as well. 😀 Get pumped!

And, of course, during all this, I’ve been wedding planning. The first thing I did was hire a wedding planner (Kim Newton Weddings, holler!). I know from my own experiences, especially since my wedding is in Virginia, I wanted to hire someone else to do most of the thinking. And it’s been a godsend. Every time I’m about ready to throw in the towel, there’s Kim asking how she can help. …Incidentally, if any of my own couples need a referral to wedding planners, I do know a few that I love! <3 Here’s a blurred out version of our Save the Date - totally in line with our engagement, right? I love it to pieces. Also, sneak peak on the back of my wedding dress - I just started fittings last week!

I wanted a HUGE ballgown, so bwahahaha. 😀 I know what you’re thinking, “But Natalie, there’s nothing… offbeat about it?” But you know what? You can be me, a photographer who loves everything geeky, offbeat, and full of critical discussion about the layers of society we’re de-constructing with marriage, but you don’t have to look it or prove yourself. I love this dress, and I love every single little silly stereotypical wedding meme I’m falling into because all that matters at the end of the day is that James and I are getting married!!!

Last, but not least, after we returned from Norovirus Christmas 2: the Return of the Bedridden Terrible Life, featuring James’ family!, we finally, FINALLY achieved my dream and adopted a second rabbit. Her name is MiNi-Le, but we’ve been calling her Mini for short. Isn’t she beautiful???

Blackjack just loves her. He follows her around, like a lovesick…bunny. Just, everywhere, and Mini is like, “omg, give me my space, man” and he’s like “no I love you.” Not OK in the human world, but they actually do get along very well, and I’m so happy that Blackjack is so happy. 😀

I’m sure if I gave it real thought, I could find so much more to talk about, but we’re up to over 1000 words in this post, i.e. way too long and more than anyone cares. Actually, I can think of at least two things that I’m still leaving off. 😉 Anyway, you just want to see all the photos, so buckle up, guys! New wedding and engagement blog posts will be coming to you weekly for the next few months!!!

Bonus: Hamilton has taken over my life. You should listen, too! Lin-Manuel Miranda changed quite a few things to get the narrative to flow, but this is the exact sort of thing that I loved in my short stint in academia. The appropriation of story in an attempt to find something that feels true. Ah…FEELINGS. Academic FEELINGS!!!

RISE UP!