Since having heard a lot of stories about these old mining towns from my husband (since he is always visiting various parochial parishes all over the place), we decided to take a road trip up to these bad boy towns and of course I wanted to see what they really had to offer to a little Lehigh Valley photographer like me. Some of the towns we shot at were Pottsville, Tamaqua, Shenandoah, etc...you get the point. Hope you enjoy my side stuff & prints are available for purchase just email us. -AA

Lehigh Valley, Philadelphia PA – January 29th, 2010

- WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced Alyssa Andrew Photography has been selected to receive the WeddingWire 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards™ for Wedding Photography!   The annual Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and celebrates excellence in quality and service within the wedding industry, as determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds.
Alyssa Andrew Photography is among the top five percent of all vendors in the WeddingWire community, which includes over 100,000 wedding professionals across the US and Canada. Awards were given to winners across 19 different service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers.

“We are excited to recognize and honor the success of the top wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “The annual Bride’s Choice Awards program has given us the unique opportunity to highlight the best wedding professionals in each region as reviewed by brides and grooms who have utilized their services in the past year.”
We are happy to announce that Alyssa Andrew Photography is among the very best Wedding Photographers within the WeddingWire Network, which includes WeddingWire and Martha Stewart Weddings. We would like to thank our past newlyweds for nominating us for the 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards.
We'd like to thank everyone who's voted for us as well as given us 5star Reviews! xoxo -Alyssa & Jim

"Hairless with a toupe'e" A dog with all the personality you ever need....Ziggy is by far one of the coolest dogs I have ever come in contact with. He is a Chinese Crested - Hairless doggy.

• A couple fun facts about these dogs: 
• Date of Origin 13th Century
• they need sunscreen when outside for long periods of time
• they are hypoallergenic
• they are known for bad teeth (hence why a lot of their tongues hang out of their mouths)

Had so much fun with this e-session... this is probably one of our longest e-sess Blog posts in AA history.

It just so happens that Jim and I usually end up having awesome weather for the majority of our shoots... a surprisingly warm day in January for our e-session with Angel & Kevin. What a cute, fun, and quirky couple. We had a blast roaming all over Angel's father's property in Slatington to Kevin's parents house. We will never forget how inviting Kevin's mom was nor the blueberry coffee she made us after we came in from shooting outside. We wish you both all the happiness in the world & look forward to seeing you both on your wedding day.

Meet Morgan and big brother Christian. I have been photographing Christian for years now.... it's always very exciting for me to see families grow and document the newest members!  Morgan is absolutely too cute for words and very very intrigued by the camera.  Looking forward to capturing her at her 4 month session.

Figured we would catch up on posting a couple things we had published in '2009. We are so excited to have worked with Hot Pink Brides Wedding Blog. Check it out:

We were really happy to have Eliseo's 1 year messy cake pictures, and a couple of images from our wedding featured in Soul-Oh Magazines August 2009 Issue. To see more checkout their website & most recent issues.

First off, I'd like to thank all the lovely bride to be's that visited our booth during the PA Bridal Expo.  Because of this great turnout, Jim and I decided to give away two engagement sessions instead of just the ONE were talking about.  We also wanted to offer a little something to everyone that signed up for our give away, so check your emails!

Without further adieu, our two winners are:

Congratulations!  I'll be getting in touch with you soon to work out details, scheduling, etc. 

And again, a big thank you to each and every one of you.  Meeting everyone was an absolute blast and we're so grateful you took the time to check us out .  We hope to speak with you soon, and we wish you the all the best with your upcoming weddings!

Special Thanks to Sarah P. of Allium Floral Designs for the beautiful flower arrangements she provided for our booth .

Cheers! Alyssa and Jim Swift

Checkout the "Just Married" section in the January 2010- Lehigh Valley Style Magazine (Bridal Issue) So happy & humble to be among the other great photographers in the Lehigh Valley!

A huge Thank you to Brian & Melissa Drozda for submitting their story to us. It just so happened we shot their wedding on my Birthday :)

Ended up having an unusually warm day spent outside on one of the last day of November, wouldn't have wanted it any other way. We all met up @ the Waterworks and shot around the surrounding properties of the Art Museum.  I absolutely loved hearing all about Amy & Nathan's proposal story and loved the fact that it had happened right where we were shooting in front of Boat House Row. We cannot wait to spend another day in Philly with the lovely couple come their wedding in September 2010.

Merry Ukrainian Christmas to everyone!  Let you guys in on a little bit of my life and let you know that I take pride in my Ukrainian/Slovak heritage, my mom's extended side of the family celebrates Christmas on January 7th vs. December 25th. Pretty interesting & cool, will post a blog with some of the traditional foods, carollers, & vodka shots!   Cheer & peace to everyone today.