It's a new year: personal || dallas, tx engagement & wedding photographer

I'm back from a glorious 3 weeks of vacation.  It was lovely and restful, but I was happy to jump back into work today with both feet!  The holidays came and went rather quickly, but I'm so excited about this new year--lots of new ideas and big plans, so much possibility!  Things have been (intentionally) pretty quiet around here the last few weeks, but the break is over, and regular blogging resumes this week!  I'm working on a wedding post + several others, but until I get a chance to post those here are a few of my favorite pictures from the last few weeks of my life :)  I have a video montage that I made of our Christmas that I was going to share with you all until certain members of my family started protesting that I didn't have permission to share video of them with the rest of the world :P So unfortunately pictures will have to do.
















Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and that your new year is off to a lovely start!
Much Love.Jessica Shae

last thoughts of summer. {dallas, tx engagement & wedding photographer}

It's 66 degrees outside.  My window is pushed open as wide as it will go and I'm sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor with my toes tucked up under me to stay warm.  I'm listening to the sound of my jon schmidt pandora station mingled with the sound of the lawnmower and enjoying the smell of fresh cut grass + my pumpkin spice candle.

I absolutely adore the changing of the seasons.  I was told the other day that you can't call it fall in texas, since the leaves don't actually turn colors and fall, they all just die--apparently autumn is the correct term.  And the slow quiet slip from summer into autumn is my favorite.  Not because I love autumn so much that I can't wait to see summer go...anyone who knows me at all knows that's not true.  But summer obsession aside, autumn is definitely my second favorite time of the year, and I'm happy to see that it's here.

This summer has been particularly sweet.  Not in a my-life-is-perfect sort of way.  But in a my-God-is-gracious kind of way.  These past few months have been the richest, happiest months of my life. This summer has been an adventure, it's been full of new experiences, of stretching scary moments--it's been full of growing up.  Something that has been a little bittersweet, but that I'm mostly ok with :)  I know, I'm 22 years old, surely I've gotten used to the idea of being grown up by now?  But quite honestly, I haven't.  There's a large part of me that still likes to pretend amidst running my own business, traveling all over, and paying bills, that I'm still just a kid.  I do cartwheels in the street sometimes, I shop in the little girls section, (the clothes are so much cheaper!) and I wear ribbons in my hair.

But despite the ribbons and cartwheels, a lot of growing up has happened this summer.  I've made some big decisions.  I've worked on being authentic (being the original person that I was made to be with a unique design and purpose given by the one true Author) and through that I've been stretched thin, scared, and been able to see God's power shine through my weaknesses.  I've seen some friendships come to an end, and new ones begin.  I've been blessed with the greatest (no really, the absolute best of the best) boy in the whole world as my best friend + boy friend, and been grateful a thousand times over for my family and their love.

I've heard it said that Grace is: getting something you don't deserve.  And this summer my full of grace God has given blessing upon blessing...I can't wait to see what this next season will hold.

Happy Autumn!

Much Love,
Jessica Shae

Summertime is for... {dallas, tx engagement & wedding photographer}

. . .going away.

I'm sitting in Starbucks right now typing this up, looking out the window at a gorgeous view of the Rocky Mountains.  I rode my bike here about 30 minutes ago in the 58 degree weather, the whole time riding alongside a happily gurgling river.

My family is taking our first real family vacation in yeeaaarrs this week and it's the happiest thing.

They headed up to Vail, Colorado last Thursday and I flew up to meet up with them Saturday after finishing up my internship.  We're here until Saturday and it's going to be a week full of reading, journaling, hiking, biking, movie watching, sweatpants and hoodies, no make-up and messy buns, and lots of memory making.

I'm so grateful for a week to stop all the normal day-to-day activities, a week of no editing, or emailing, or (after this!) blogging.  So now you know why things will be a little quiet around here for a while, I'll be back refreshed and ready to jump back into normal life in about a week!

Much Love.

Jessica Shae

Rachel: winter portraits {dallas, tx engagement and wedding photographer}

Sometimes I just have to do a shoot just for me. A shoot to try new stuff, to get out of my comfort zone a little bit, to help me get off "auto" and try new ideas. And I've been itching to take someone out to a couple of new locations I'd found for shooting for weeks now, so it helps that I have 6 beautiful little people living at my house ;) One of the things I want to make sure and do this year is an individual shoot of each of my siblings so that my mom has really good pictures of each of them. Aaaand Rachel got to be the lucky first!
It was FU-REEzing cold, but we had fun tromping through fields, stepping on some poor famers crops (all the while I was apologizing--out loud!!--for killing his crops. I hope we didn't ruin his harvest.) and taking pictures at the abandoned house that I'm pretty sure crackpots use on a regular basis if the words scribbled on the door were any indication. Ha, never a dull moment on a shoot with me ;)

Thanks for being so beautiful Rachel.














The pictures with the black hat are my FAVooooorites, hands down. For several reasons. One, I think Rachel looks like a Russian Princess or something amazing like that, and two, because that hat was my great-grandmothers hat. Can we please go back to a time where they wore fascinating things like this?!?!













































I'm going to be booking a limited number of portrait sessions this year, so seniors email me now if you're interested in having your pictures done by me, spots will fill up fast!

Much Love.

Jessica Shae

And the winners are...! {dallas, tx engagement and wedding photographer}

It's been so much fun having this contest over the past week and a half and I've loved getting feedback from y'all on what your favorites are! I'll have to do this more often! ;)

But the votes are in and polls are closed, so I'm excited to announce the winners!

The winner of the portraits portion of my contest were the Manneys with 24 votes!

The winners of the Engagement portion of the contest, with 28 votes, are Matthew and Sarah Berry!

Aaaaand the couple with the most votes in the wedding portion of the contest is Jason & Elizabeth Smith, who won with a whopping 39 votes!

And now these 3 finalists are entered to see who can win overall, and win a gallery wrap CANVAS of their photo!

So take a second to vote one more time HERE on which picture you think is the best of these three! You have until Friday night to vote!

Thanks for participating peeps, and sometime in the next week or so I'm going to post about another give-away/contest thingy (that's the technical term for it) that all of you faithful blog followers will have a chance to win.

Much Love.

Jessica Shae