I have recently found great joy in stylizing my sessions so of course, when I realized my sister-in-law is turning 25 this year, I had to put together something special! After talking her into doing a cake smash, my best friend Aubrey and I got to planning the perfect mix of fun and pretty for this special session. Aubrey is extraordinarily talented when it comes to baking so I shared a few ideas with her about what I envisioned for the cake. Afterall, a cake smash is usually about getting all messy and being silly with the cake but for an adult, especially one that I knew was going to put some time and effort into hair and makeup, I wanted it to be something a bit more elegant but still "messy". As Aubrey and I brainstormed how we could bring this session to life, we decided that making a cake that would basically fall apart on its own would be the best way to go and that is where we came up with the idea of adding candy to the inside of the cake!

From there, we had a ton of fun getting ideas together for different ways to get the "mess" into the session without actually ruining my Paige's clothes, hair or makeup. Ultimately, I decided champagne would be super fun because who doesn't want to pop champagne on their birthday!?

I think my favorite part of this whole thing (and of course, it can't be photographed), was how Aubrey incorporated the champagne aspect of the session into the cake itself - the cake tasted like champagne! It was insanely delicious and had just the perfect hint of champagne but was still sweet and perfectly moist. Ahhhhh - I am now craving it again!

So the day of the session came and of course, after about two months of planning the perfect outdoor session at Golden Hour in a beautiful private location, it was cold and rainy. After getting over the initial bum-out we were feeling, we adapted and ended up creating a super fun, indoor backdrop for Paige to smash her cake! I lugged out my 107" seamless backdrop paper and we happily set up in Aubrey's garage and shot the entire cake smash with the garage door open, taking turns to run and turn off the light every time one of us triggered it to turn back on... about every 30 seconds.

Once we were happy with the cake smash (and all of us had tasted it a few times - you know, just to be sure it was amazing), we headed out into the front yard to pop the champagne. We all had a lot of fun with this because when we finally got to this part of the session, the rain had stopped and the sun was just coming back out so we still got to play in that gorgeous Golden Hour light!

And let me just say... I want to pop champagne at every single session now so future clients, just know that I will probably suggest it, if not beg you to bring a bottle to splash!

All in all, I think that being a photographer is more than just chasing the light - it is being open to change and remaining adaptable so that we can create those wow-images for our clients, even when things don't go exactly as planned!

Huge thanks to Paige for agreeing to this goofy idea that I just couldn't let go and to Aubrey for creating a cake more beautiful and tasty than I could have ever imagined!

Be sure to follow Aubrey on Instagram at @theoilyhen to see what she is up to with her kids, her micro-farm, and of course, her phenomenal cakes!