Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

Without further ado…

Last month, Greg and Tarah had a fairy tale wedding in the mountains at Lake Louise. They spent their entire weekend at the Fairmont Chateau, which was an absolutely beautiful, romantic, and perfect venue to get married.

I brought Jan along for the weekend, and on our drive up I was quite worried about the weather… the temperature that morning hit -50C (with wind chill)!!! It had warmed up a bit (-20C) by the time we arrived in Lake Louise in the afternoon, but as we scouted out our locations for the next day, our hands kept freezing up every ten minutes. We were SO lucky the next day because it warmed up so much! I would have been so heartbroken if we couldn’t spend much time out in the snow for photos.

Tarah and Greg perfected every detail of their wedding (and even took part in the reception decor and designing the cake!). Everywhere we went, little girls stared in awe, commenting to their moms that they just saw a snow princess. We had tourists following us all day, snapping photos of the couple. Obviously they were more beautiful than the scenery :) They oozed with love, they were gorgeous, and we had more backgrounds than we knew what to do with.

Everything was perfect all day, and I’ve never had so much trouble narrowing down photos as I have this time. I have to warn you now, this post is more photo heavy than any I’ve done before, so you might not want to look at it from your iPhone ;) (more…)

Jeremy and Eve were my first wedding of the year, and what a great way to start it off! They’ve been in love for quite some time now and only finally decided to tie the knot (which led to some great “It’s about time!” jokes during the ceremony). With their closest friends and family watching, they had their intimate evening ceremony in the Galt Museum. Luckily we were able to keep everything inside because it was a bit too chilly outside, but the Galt was warm and cozy.

We didn’t have much time for photos, but I had an awesome time with them when we were together. Eve is a total sweety, and I loved how Jer would randomly pull out silly faces in the photos. However, he knew just when to stop doing them so no one would get mad at him!

After the photos, Eve and Jer rejoined their family for hors d’oeuvres and music. I hope you guys had a fantastic time all night! (more…)

I’ve been dying to post these photos, but since they were a surprise Christmas gift I had to wait till now. Desi and Chelsea came to me to do some cheesy Christmas photos, Sears style. Since I used to work there for a few years while I was in school, I knew just the poses they needed. This was the most fun I think I’ve ever had on a photo session! We could barely get through the session because we were all laughing so hard. Both of them hit up the thrift stores beforehand to get some tacky sweaters, and practiced the cheesiest smiles they could come up with for days before. I especially love that Desi parted his hair down the middle. (more…)

Greg and Tarah are getting married in a few months, and I’m so excited for their winter wedding! We met up today on what is probably our last warm day [aw :( ] for their engagement photos, and they brought along their adorable dog, Bosley. They are such a cute couple and soooo easy to photograph (well, when I wasn’t frantically jumping around to get Bos’s attention!)

I’ll see you two again soon :) (more…)

I love doing photos with Sara, so I was thrilled to have another session with her! She and Michel are expecting their first baby in a couple months, so they wanted to get some family photos with their dogs Goldie, Riley, and Buddy before the baby comes. After the dogs decided that photos were absolutely out of the question and it was only time to play fight, we finished off the session with some maternity photos with just Sara and Michel. They are so cute together! (more…)

Jocelyn and Matthew were married last weekend at a beautiful, intimate ceremony at Henderson Lake with their closest friends and family (officiated by my favorite, Norma!). Though they are both fairly quiet people, they constantly shared all these cute moments between one another that had me smiling a lot too. Matthew took some encouragement to smile with his teeth in the beginning (including his family yelling, “Teeth!” at him), but after a while his grin was ear to ear every time he looked at Jocelyn :)

As you’ll see, they kept things unique with Jocelyn’s awesome green shoes, super colorful flowers, and a Best Lady in place of a Best Man.

Thank you to Andrew Suderman for helping out, and climbing on garbage bins for family photos! (more…)