Ok I will do some before after shots. I remind you , I love to push photography . It is another obsession I have besides gardening. I will work the details. But I am still learning my camera also. I hate to RTFM. TRoth garden taken in failing light at sunset After I addressed darkness, lightened the shadows, and burned the highlights, and the addressed the overall blue tones by adding yellow. A cactus group shot that had a beautiful beam of light. I like light and I am always photographing it and it is always making me tear my hair out. This one I found flat compared to what I saw. After punching lighter the exposure all over and darkening the exposure values , I elevated the definition to accentuate the contrast in the textures. de blued it and de-greened it I think. I did take liberties with this next picture of the Kalanchoe Luciae be cause I wanted the viewer to be surrounded and swallowed by the plant. I am not always driven by reality. Usually I am, but sometimes I gotta do a "Georgia". I felt that this one was washed out from how I felt it was. This one I did go a little overboard on it. So Sue me. Here is another one from the K. luciae series. The differences are sometimes not that starling, but subtle , but the overall will be worth it. Notice the highlights have an indistinct texture and I just want to make things better even though the picture is fairly alright. I just like to fiddle. Things just seem a little fuzzy. I feel air and I don't like it. I popped the exposure lighter then darkened the exposure value, burned the highlights. I want that rich sense of space amongst the leaves and the red to pop and show the light coming through them. I wanted the texture on the leaves. I am a little distressed with the out of focus on the back highlighted leaf. The highlight is still reading as blown.. I should have gotten my tripod out so I could cut the F stop down but then the sun would have been gone. I got the fuzzy out of there . the air is clear. I can breathe now . OH god, now you know I am obsessed. You know what is weird. I can do this for peoples portfolios and I do for some artist around all over. They send me full sized files and I see if I can work them.

I am late to chime in here bee bee, but I just hosted my daughters bridal shower last month, assisted by her MOH, who lives across the country. It was easier than you may think. We did it all by email. I did all of the leg work, but I didn't mind. She is my only daughter. I left the contacting the bridal party up to her. She initiated the group emails and collected the $. She asked my opinion on themes, menu and locations. I made suggestions and luckily she loved them. We went with a Breakfast at Tiffany's theme as my daughter is a huge Audrey Hepburn fan. Each girl volunteered for a specific job and I did the decor since I am crafty. The MOH had a timeline for the shower, and kept it going, with all guests engaged. It was lovely. I got to sit back & enjoy. Also, don't forget to include the Mother of the Groom in the planning. She is important too and may be a good resource and want to help out. Ours made all of the florals! So, I suggest you ask the bride for her mom's email and any other bridesmaids to plan the shower & bachelorette. As far as your role in planning the wedding... your job is to be there to be a sounding board for her ideas and shoulder for her to cry on when she has her meltdowns about the wrong shade of chartruse or green beans almondine instead of asparagus : p The day of the wedding it will be your job to try to keep preparations rolling on time and keep her stress free. So, as a Mother of a Bride in 18 days (and Groom 4 weeks later, yikes!),it is my opinion that it is not the MOH job to plan the wedding! My daughter & I have happily planned everything together. I say let me savor those last few moments with my little girl, before she is all grown up. And I bet her mother may be feeling that way too.

Ophoenix, many folks have mentioned having issues posting photos, especially in the original post. It seems to be easier in follow up comments, but it is truly frustrating and has been going on for weeks without Houzz seeming to be working on a fix despite many comments about it. That is a stunning set of flowers, so I am glad you persisted and were finally able to post them. Roxanna, sometimes a post can get delayed for some reason between the writing of the post and its public appearance. Can you see it in the list of postings you have created on your My Houzz page if you click on Activity and then Posts? If it is in the list and you click the link to take you there, can you reach the post? Is it visible in the forum(s) you listed it in? Sometimes if you add some forums that aren’t directly related such as asking about paint colors in he landscape design forum, folks will flag it as miscategorized. It then will disappear for a bit until Houzz decides if it is appropriately placed. One way to avoid this is to carefully consider where it should be best posted and not necessarily add all three possible forums and instead only post on the single most appropriate forum.

If I were in your position, I would find a reputable supplier of your product. They would either fabricate or have a fabricator. My reasoning for this is that I had Home Depot bid my kitchen remodel 5 years ago. I had them bid everything, but only ended up letting them do the demo and installation of cabinets. When they measured for cabinets, they assumed I would be replacing fairly new floor covering hence ordering a 24" corner sink cabinet. Fortunately, I caught that and told them I wanted the originally sized 36" base. It created a delay of a couple of weeks. To shorten my long story, I saved about $2,000 finding my own countertop and backsplash supplier who used a reputable fabricator. Plus, I served as my own GC to schedule electrician, plumber, appliance installation much to the chagrin of HD. They claimed I would mess up their installation timeframe. Well, I got it taken care of and saved approximately another $4,000 over HD's bid. To me, $6,000 is a lot of money! Last, but not least, I was not impressed with the cabinet installation. HD prices are misleading. Once you have spent hours consulting whether for kitchen or carpet or whatever, the price adding installation is considerably higher than necessary.