Melissa Munding's Blog bio picture

  • Hello!

    My name is Melissa and welcome to my blog! I like to think of my blog as both an online journal and an interactive portfolio. It's a way for me to share my passions with you. I'm madly in love with photography and the beautiful lives I have the opportunity to capture with the click of my shutter. I'm an artist and an art lover. A sister and a daughter. A friend. A people person and a wallflower. Sarcastic but sweet. Part control freak and part go-with-the-flow. A hopeless romantic. Getting to know you and your loved ones is the absolute BEST part of my job as a photographer. I want to get to know you, let's be friends! Stay awhile and introduce yourself! I love hearing from all of you.

    Want to work together? Have a question? Just want to say hello? Contact me, I look forward to hearing from you!

Aug 31 2010

Our Honeymoon – Carmel

I’m gonna skip ahead and take all this wedding business out of order and share some fun from our honeymoon!

Can I just say that honeymoons are the best thing ever?  Can we do this again next year?  After a year and a half of wedding planning and months of stress we had a beautiful wedding that was everything we had hoped for, but it was seriously exhausting!  On one hand, I’m sad it’s all over.  The actual wedding day flew by and I had the best time!  But, on the other hand, I’m so relieved that the stress is finished!  We certainly needed a vacation after our completely DIY wedding, it was a lot of work!  Thankfully, Branden’s new job let him off the hook for a whole week for our honeymoon.  We were afraid we wouldn’t get to go at all but it all worked out and it was AH-MAZING!

We left Monday afternoon and drove the 6 hours from Orange County to Carmel-by-the-Sea.  Carmel was so incredibly romantic and relaxing and Branden and I both loved every minute of it!  I would go back for another romantic trip in a heartbeat.

We booked our hotel just hours before we left home and we weren’t disappointed in the least.  We arrived around midnight and the sweet little Inn had closed for the evening so we were a little nervous as we walked up to the quiet office.  There was an envelope taped on the door with my name on it, asking us to please just check in in the morning and giving us our room assignment.  It was pretty cute.

Much to my surprise, we had booked an actual suite!  I was expecting a typical hotel room but this was anything but.  We walked into a huge living room area, complete with a mini fridge, bar, daybed, TV, desk, etc, with a room and bathroom in the other room.  It was so nice to be able to spread out and get comfy!  It felt like we were staying at some sweet little old lady’s guest house.  Check out this decor!  It’s so “old lady,” it’s awesome.  It gets so cold up there that they even had a heater under the tile floor in the bathroom, it was amazing!  I never thought that would be a feature I’d enjoy, but it rocked.  It was just so cool to not feel like you’re in a stuffy hotel.  It was sweet and endearing, even if it looked like Laura Ashley went a little crazy with all the flowers!  It felt like home, but somebody else’s home, which was just perfect for our honeymoon.  Plus, the staff was awesome!  After we checked in that first morning, they ran out after us when they saw that we were the people with the crazy “Just Married” painted car.  The guy literally ran to catch us and handed us a bottle of wine with huge congratulations.  It was really the sweetest thing!  I loved it there so much.

This is the first non-family trip Branden and I have ever taken together so we couldn’t wait to get out and explore this lovely, quaint little town.  Everything about Carmel is absolutely charming.  I took a ridiculous amount of photos on this trip, obviously, but here are a few of my favorites from our walks.

I’m seriously in love with all the sweet little cottages!  I want one!

We went in a bunch of little shops and this sign just cracked me up.  I love my man, he was a great idea, but this was too funny not to share!

Mmmm, we had the best meal at the famous Hog’s Breath Inn.  It was previously owned by Clint Eastwood and his presence was apparent with the masculine theme and signed Dirty Harry stills on the wall.  The food was just good old American cuisine, meat & potatoes, and it was delicious.  In fact, several of the places we ate were so good, we wished we could have gone back to them!  I wish I could have brought some of them home with me.

Love me some houses with character!  They make my suburbian track home look so dull.

Just a few more details about town.  It was hard to narrow it down, everything was freaking adorable!

More honeymoon photos are on their way!

Posted in Personal

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Aug 27 2010

Our Story – The Beginning

Just 12 days ago I married the most wonderful man on the face of this beautiful earth!  I have so much to share with you all from these past few weeks, but first I want to go back a little further and start from the beginning.  The months leading up to the wedding were so crazy, I never got to show off our amazing engagement photos!  I’m so madly in love with our photographer, Amanda Patrice.  Not only is she incredibly talented, technically skilled and ultra creative, but she’s just an all around fantastic person and I’m so thankful for the awesome friendship we’ve developed over the past year.  So many people  asked me how I (as a photographer) was able to choose my own wedding photographer, but I swear, it was the easiest decision we made throughout the entire wedding planning process.  I love Amanda so much, there was no other choice!

Branden and I met at Fullerton College when we were both taking classes there about 4 years ago.  We never had any classes together or mutual friends or any real reason to meet.  It just so happened that my class was canceled on a day when he happened to be early and we ended up having a conversation beneath a tree while we both waited around for our next class to start.  The first time we ever hung out together, what you could call our first date, we went to the movies.  Branden looked so young that for the first time in my life, I was carded for a rated R movie.  It’s hilarious!  I was never even questioned as a teenager but the moment I hang out with Branden, at 26 years old, I’m forced to prove my age.  We’ve been laughing about that for years now!  Movies have kind of been our thing ever since that very first date.  These photos are so expressive of who we are and what we love and I love them so much!

I freaking love this reflection shot.  So creative!

One of our favorite places outdoors is the Fullerton Arboretum.  Many times we’ve gone together to just sit and read together among the beauty of the park.  I love this one.

For reals, when do you see me without a Diet Coke?  We had to.

I’ve shot at the arboretum myself many times and I’ve never “seen” this shot.  It’s so cool to see the same place through another person’s lens and I totally love it. 

This might be my favorite.  I LOVE color!  This is my all time favorite museum ever!  The Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena.  Go!

It was right here, in front of my favorite Van Gogh, that Branden proposed.  It was the day after Christmas.  There were people, tourists, everywhere.  I’ve never seen any museum as packed as this was on this day.  And he still got down on one knee, shy as he is.  And asked the most important question of our lives.

After yeses, hugs and kisses, we escaped outside to the garden for some quiet alone time to celebrate in private.  I love this garden : )

Here are a few more of my favorites from our engagement session.

The e-session was tons of fun and it was a great preview of what our wedding photography was going to be like.  I can’t wait to show off the rest of our stuff!  There are so many pictures I’m dying to show off, from bachelorette parties/showers, to the actual wedding and honeymoon.  Everything was absolute magic!  We’re super happy!  Stay tuned!

Posted in Personal

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Aug 08 2010

T-Minus One Week!

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!  In less than one week I will finally be saying “I do” to the man of my dreams.  He’s so much more than I ever could have asked for and I look forward to growing old and wrinkly (you know, like elephants!) together.  The to-do lists in my head are keeping me awake tonight even though I attempted to lose them by writing them all down.  Branden is out enjoying his bachelor party with some friends and I’m laying awake thinking of all the reasons I’m excited to finally become his wife.  God knew what He was doing when he created us for each other and I’ll be forever thankful for having him as my husband.  I just can’t believe we’re getting married in less than a week!  Time has never flown by quite so fast in all my life.  It’s a whirlwind but I’m feeling good.  I’m feeling pretty calm considering all the things we still have to do.  I can’t WAIT to show off all the fun projects we’ve been working on.  For now, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, I’ll share our invitation…which I designed : )  I seem to be loving graphic design more by the minute and I am ridiculously happy with how our invites turned out.  They were a labour of love for sure, but so worth it.  At some point you’ll see the finished project with even more than you see here, but this is our invitation, in all its glory and whimsy.  I spent so much time on this bad boy, I just had to share!  I’m a proud lady.  I hope you like it as much as I do!  But even if you don’t, it’s quite alright because I’m still patting myself on the back.  I’ve learned so much in this planning process…from graphic design, to floral design, to accounting!  I’m learning how to let go of the things that I don’t have control over and call in the troops when necessary.  My perfectionistic tendencies have kept me on track without getting me in trouble just yet.  I hope I can continue this balancing act for the rest of the week!  I’m so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  My heart is bursting with joy and excitement!

p.s.

If you’re coming to my wedding,  DO NOT use the address on the invite in this post!  I changed it to a generic number just for privacy reasons.

Posted in Personal, Planning

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