The last time I was at Cabrillo Beach was June 2nd (last month).
I love Santa Barbara.
When it comes to Santa Barbara Wedding, I need to be extra careful with two things.

1. Give plenty of traffic time
   Normal driving time between Camarillo and Santa Barbara is about 50 minutes.
   But, sometimes I get stuck on traffic for 2 hours.
2. Bring Sun protection
   I will be toasted today on Cabrillo Beach, yikes.
   My story on Sun Protection

I feel more comfortable everytime I come back to Santa Barbara.  There were fair amount of people at the beach.  But, I knew where I can get some free parking .  I arrived at Hotel Mar Monte 30 minutes earlier.  I put thick coat of Sunblock lotion at the car and headed out to Mar Monte.

I went to the bride's room for getting ready shots.  She was in the exact same room that my past customer used. (this wedding).

The Sun was very strong. But the wedding ceremony was over pretty fast.

Related Topics
Hotel Mar Monte

I put on a thick coat of sun screen and headed up to Santa Barbara. This was my third wedding at Santa Barbara this month.  Santa Barbara’s been good to me and I love going to Santa Barbara.  Hotel Mar Monte is yet another high class wedding/reception spot in Santa Barbara by Cabrillo Beach. The statistic shows that, at any given weekend, about 200 weddings take place in Santa Barbara area.  As I drove up to Santa Barbara, I saw number of wedding photographers working already. I’m always paranoid when I go to Santa Barbara, because traffic is unpredictable.  Today, I arrived to wedding site one hour earlier.

Photographer VenturaPhoto.com

The wedding ceremony took place on the sand at Cabrillo Beach.  Everything went very smooth.  It was a good beach wedding day.  Pictures came out very nice. The only challenge was the clouds.  We had small patches of cloud all over the sky. After the ceremony, we had the formal photography session on the same beach at Cabrillo.  As usual, people were nice to me, so my job was easy.  It’s hard not to take good pictures when people are happy and good looking.  As you can see, pictures came out good.  Little patches of cloud gave us a cool effects.  But, I must confess that I was extra busy with constant changes of lighting situation.  Because of the clouds, the lighting situation was keep changing.  I had to measure the light every minute .  I had to adjust shutter speed and flash output constantly to make pictures look natural.  Every single picture was taken with a flash. 

Photographer VenturaPhoto.com

After formal photography, we all crossed Cabrillo street, waved to people honking at us, and headed to Mar Monte Hotel.  From there, everything went smooth. The reception was held at La Cantina Room.  The bride sang “Could not ask for more” to the groom.  She sang with a lot of feeling.  She was a good singer.  The entire bridesmaids cried. I swapped business cards with the DJ (Coastal Entertainment Group) and the videographer (You’re The Star Video Productions).  I cracked a lot of jokes with the videographer because we were working side by side for 8 hours.

Hotel Mar Monte
1111 East Cabrillo Blvd Santa Barbara, California 93103
805-963-0744 Resv. 800-643-1994 www.hotelmarmonte.com

You’re The Star Video Productions
P.O. Box 60703 Santa Barbara, California 93160
866-STAR-959 www.see-your-memories.com

Coastal Entertainment Group
805.896.2777 www.conejovalleydj.com

Related Topics
Hotel Mar Monte
Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center