For several months now, I have been DYING to buy a tulle skirt… but I’ve never found one that I love enough at the right price. I’ve also been toying with the idea of learning how to sew for years now, so over Black Friday I bought myself a beginner’s sewing machine. Of course, it sat at my office (where I get all my packages delivered) until Christmas, when I brought it over to my grandma’s so she could help me figure out how to use it. I knew that my first project would be a tulle maxi skirt and two weekends ago, after copious amounts of research for a good tutorial, I made this skirt. I’m planning on writing another blog post about my experience later, because I learned SO much and am definitely making another one! This one has a bunch of flaws up close, but I love it anyways, haha! And it was /perfect/ for this shoot that I did up in Lake Tahoe.

We went to Tahoe for MLK weekend because Sam is an avid skier and I just love Tahoe in general. During college, it was our escape from campus and it still evokes that feeling for me. We drove up late Friday night and basically arrived around midnight. Since we were planning on skiing the next day, we woke up bright and early at 7:30. The weather looked unpromising, but Sam and his friend Liane were super excited about skiing, so we got all ready and drove to Squaw… where we finally conceded that the rain would make us totally miserable if we decided to ski. We ended up spending the day hanging out in the condo and playing Boggle and cards. Definitely my kind of day! About an hour before sunset, I looked out to see that there was some incredible light streaming through the clouds. Luckily everyone else was down to head outside for a bit and we ended up driving to this beach a couple minutes away that had those awesome round rocks that you often see in Tahoe.

Of course, I was the only one crazy enough to be out there in a tulle skirt and t-shirt when there was snow on the ground… but it was totally worth it! The sky was incredible and the location was to-die for. Sam even joined me for a few of my self portraits 🙂 Wouldn’t this just be an amazing location to take engagement photos? I would totally drive up to Tahoe if I had a couple ask, haha!

Here’s a little outtake! You can see my ski socks and sneakers that I was wearing under my skirt, haha!

For the photographers out there, these were taken with a tripod and a timer, for the most part. Sam also helped me press the shutter a few times when I got tired of running back and forth (especially on top of the rocks). I was too lazy too use a remote here, though that would have been a good option. I set the focus by manually focusing on the location I was going to be (for example, I focused on the rock I am standing on in that last one).

If you’d like to book your own couples/engagement session in Tahoe or in the San Francisco Bay Area, contact me or email me at alice@aliceche.com!

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Alice Che is a San Francisco Bay Area photographer specializing in wedding, engagement, couple and boudoir photography. Serving the South Bay, Peninsula, and East Bay: San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Carlos, Burlingame, Los Altos, Milpitas, Union City, Fremont, Berkeley, El Cerrito and surrounding areas.