Last week, Table4 went to Lost Wages, NV to attend a very important international business trip.  (Try to focus on our ties).

Just kidding. We were in Vegas to spend a week among other industry leaders and wedding photography vendors at WPPI.  WPPI is an annual convention and trade show held for wedding photography professionals to help us network, inspire, be inspired, learn, and enjoy a week of being around others in the industry.  We took the trip with some of our good friends, Cesar and Tanya Perez (who also took the above photo) of Perez Weddings.  There were close to 10,000 attendees this year and I’m proud to say that Andrew and I met 9 new people.  Just kidding.  We met like 22 new people. That’s still sad.  BUT, more importantly, it was a week for Table4 to take a business retreat, refresh some ideas for the future, and add more value for our clients!  (To all our new friends, HI!)

I won’t lie though, out of the 5 days we were there, we got maybe 4-5 hours of sleep a night.  If any of you are on Facebook, some of the more…interesting…photos have probably started to creep up in your feeds.  But, needless to say, we got a ton of great ideas and inspiration to bring our business to the next level.  In fact, one of the things we’ll be implementing soon is a paperless (aka GREEN) booking system so everything will be done online!  This means less paper, less copies, less licking stamps, less mailing back and forth, and more tree saving.  New pricing will be announced soon as well, so if are wanting to book with us, contact us to take advantage of current pricing.

One of the cooler things we did during the week was actually shoot.  The irony of this convention is that there’s a lot of classroom time and trade show time, but not a lot of shooting time.  So we took an afternoon/evening off to go on a Vegas photowalk.  Our friends, Dianna and Aaron came with us as we walked around kind of aimlessly on the strip, snapping whatever we saw.  Here are a few of those images:

That evening, we hit up Thomas Keller’s Bouchon with Esti, Kean, Sarah, and Serena for some ridiculous indulgence.  I ordered the pork belly (pure fat) and steak frites (aka an order of french fries with a side of steak) and Andrew got beef rillettes and skirt steak.  The food was delicious and the company was great!  Thanks to Pete and Preston for the suggestions!

The next morning, we got up at 5am with Cesar, Serena, Dianna, and two of our newest friends, Austin and Jean, for a shoot at the infamous Red Rock Canyon.  Since Austin and Jean were married like a week before WPPI, they still had her dress in the car and Austin brought a suit to be our models.  But they told us it was to see if they could get a free room upgrade if they showed up with dress in tow.

Here’s Serena after hibernating in her cave all winter.

And Cesar with his brand new lens and day old bowtie.

This last image is courtesy of Serena Grace….and Act Restoring Mouthwash.

Overall, it was an incredible week of fun, food, and new/old friends.  We’re so glad we got to meet new people and hang out with other industry leaders.  We’re also stoked to be implementing a bunch of new “things” for Table4 that will undoubtedly make this job more fun (hard to do) and much better for our clients!