First Family Portraits

A few weeks after Devyn was born, we dressed up the fam and went to Studio One to get our first family portraits made!  (And hopefully score some presh pics worthy of birth announcements...more to come on that in a later post!)

I decided that we needed to wear the colors we look best in, blues, and let Devyn rock it out in pink! So after a full day's shopping at Northpark I was able to use outfits Cade & Devyn already had (plaid shorts and navy polo for him, a white and pink ballerina-esque ruffled onesie for her) and buy new shirts for Nick and I. Usually I'd shy away from mixing patterns but the colors were all so perfect together, and my Pinterest studies of photography boards and blogs gave some courage to try it, and I must say--- family fashion success!!

Standing in this pose felt super awkward but turned out to be my fave pic once I saw it!!
FYI: Holding a nine day old for pics and trying to get her face and a toddler smile was incredibly difficult. She slept through the whole ordeal!!

Sweet baby girl

The Cadester

Things I liked about Studio One:  The photographer was quick, got lots of cute pics to choose from, she totally knew how to work with Cade --- who happened to be so excited to explore the studio and run all over the photo area. Thank God for their ladder and her feather duster which he loved!  She formed a bond with him and made him comfortable, which I really liked.

Things I didn't like:  They had a time schedule and what they promised on the phone for the family shoot was not what they delivered. I expected an hour, we got thirty minutes. I expected to get the shots I wanted, the photographer had a set list of poses that the Studio is known for and hit every one of them... my suggestions threw her off.  I got all the shots I wanted minus one. We didn't get a brother/sister shoot because the manager came over and hovered then tapped her watch then told us we needed to be done.  I was pushy momma and insisted I get my solo shots of my newborn!!! I'm grateful I did, the whole mission o' the day was to get a family shot and newborn pics for the announcement.  I did want a bro-sis pic for the announcement, but I had a sweet shot from home that worked just as well.

MAJOR thing I didn't like: I  had no idea how much it was going to cost me.  The Living Social deal was for one shot only, so we used those prints for our family pics (24 prints of 1 pose for $29). But ordering any other poses was going to cost us. The original package they put together? $896!!! Um, NO. I don't want my  husband to divorce me when I come home with that "deal of the century", or whatever the psycho photog called it.

 So I asked if I could just buy the digital images on CD..... Take a guess at how much. Did you guess $455?!  I shit you not. I asked her what the "a la cart" prices were (my devious brain already forming a plan involving a stupid kid at the CVS photo counter).  She pulled the numbers from her damn head. There was no list of prices. Shady, shady, shady. But here she was....sitting in front of me with a slideshow of my babies scrolling across the screen and sappy sweet music playing softly in the background. She had me  by the balls. If I wanted to leave with the pics I'd have to cough up some cash.  Hardball momma came out, I ordered the pics I  needed and all is well.