December 31 is obviously a good day to look back at the year past and look forward at the year to come. And I’m sure that’s what we will do, tonight, with a glas of bubbly and traditional pastries. But this New Year’s Eve, I thought it would be good to take you back to last month. Nice warm weather. Enjoying our time off. A great hotel. A unique country. Awesome company. Dubai. Amazing!

The top photo is the view from our hotel room at Le Royal Meridien Jumeirah Beach. We totally recommend this hotel! Another one of the hotel, seen from the ocean.

Botero’s horse at the very luxurious Dubai Mall’s entrance. The crazy tall Burj Kalifa in the backgrond – with its 800+ meters the tallest building in the world.

Of course we visited the observation deck of the Burj Kalifa. Just the elevator ride up to the deck is a whole new experience. And when you’re up at over 500 meter height, the skyscrapers below you (that are way taller than the tallest building in the Netherlands) look like little toy towers. Bizarre.

We’ve done quite a bit of sightseeing. A few photos we took on our trips.
Marco in the desert:

The Burj Al Arab – the only seven star hotel in the world:

One day, we had lunch at the Pierchic restaurant at Madinat Jumeirah. It’s built in the ocean at the end of a long pier. Great food, great view!

View of Dubai from Palm Island:

Atlantis The Palm at Palm Island:

My mom and I at the Dubai Marina:

Grand Mosque:

I could go on and on with photos of the Dubai Creek water taxi, the old souks and lots more, but I’ll close off with this amazing night time panorama shot of the Dubai Marina, close to our hotel. We know we’d love to come back to Dubai again – and next time we’d love our trip to coincide with the horseraces at the Meydan Racecourse!

Have a fun and save New Year’s Eve and we wish you a wonderful and beautiful 2012!

Mascha and Jeroen got married in the West-Frisian Museum in Hoorn, which was totally decorated for Christmas. We’ll share more photos from their awesome wedding soon, but I thougth this was a fitting image to wish everyone very happy holidays!

Enjoy Christmas and enjoy spending time with your loved ones!

Lots of love,
Marco and Ellen, Ms. Daisy and Flo

‘Tis the season for corporate End of Year Parties and we photographed the Boon Edam company party last week in  ‘De Jozef’ in Volendam. ‘Volendam’ was the theme of the party and the many Volendam’ers working with Boon Edam sure liked that. There was a fish shop with raw herring and other delicious fishes, the band Volendam Alive performed, the well known Volendam’er Kees ‘Parre’ Tol was the Master of Ceremonies, they had Volendam snacks and best of all, a show by the famous Volendam rockstars the 3JS at the end of the night. Quite a party!

Just like in former years, we brought our mini-studio set up. And to keep in line with the Volendam theme, we decided to use a chromakey background. We had visited Volendam earlier that day to shoot some backgrond images to use with the chromakey, so we could photoshop everyone into a true Volendam scene. I’m sure Boon Edam is a great company to work for, as the people that work there are so much fun. We had a blast again. Here are some chromakey images.

(Do you recognize anyone in the above image? We shot both Yvonne and Daan’s wedding (a few years ago) and Michelle and Raymon’s wedding (in September of this year!)

Kees ‘Parre’ Tol tought a Volendam lesson or two. If you don’t pronounce the ‘h’ you’re halfway there, but it’s still very hard to understand Volendams:

Accordeon and Volendam Alive.

When the MC announced that the 3JS would start their performance ‘any minute’, I moved closer to the stage. Just like all other ladies there. A girl excitedly whispered in my ear that we stood at the best site of the stage, as ‘Jaap Kwakman will be on this side of the stage!’. Well, I found out I kind of recognizes exactly one of the 3JS’ songs, so the whole 3JS hype is a bit over my head, but they gave the audience a great show!

“Sharing together is double the joy” was the motto of Ingeborg and Remco’s wedding invitation and that’s exactly what these two do: share and enjoy lots and lots. With each other, with friends and family and definitely with their kids. When Ingeborg and Remco met, it wasn’t obvious that they would get married exactly ten years later, on 11-11-11. They were living totally different lives and had very different lifestyles. But they clicked and they’ve been together ever since, making a little party out of every single day. Their wedding day was a very special party they shared with all their loved ones.

Both the bride and the groom got ready at home, but they did each have their own floor!

Hilarious. While Ingeborg was getting her make-up done, Remco had to come in to grab something. And of course her wedding dress was hanging on the closet that Remco had to be in. So she quickly grabbed her gorgeous dress and hid on the other side of the closet, while Remco looked for his cufflinks…

I’ve never seen an ‘instruction manual’ for getting the bride dressed, but it obviously worked, as Ingeborg was dressed in no time at all!

The couple’s youngest daughter and her best friend were ready long before the bride and groom were and had plenty of time to play a few games.

Their ‘first look’ – I love the look in Ingeborg’s eyes right after Remco first saw her as his bride.

A humongous Range Rover limousine came to bring the bride and groom and their bridal party to the wedding venue, beach club Take Five in Zandvoort. We had a few minutes for some photos on the beach before the start of the ceremony. And like I already said on Friday, all of Zandvoort was decorated with billboards for Ingeborg and Remco’s wedding. So much fun!

The wedding ceremony took place in one of Take Five’s rooms. They didn’t have near enough seating, that’s how many people came to celebrate Ingeborg and Remco’s wedding!

Writer Yvonne Kroonenberg has known the bride since she was a little girl and she read a beautiful and moving story.

The wedding cake was cut right after the ceremony and afterwards we took a photo of all wedding guests.

After that we took some more photos of the bride and groom on the beach. The weather was great, but there wasn’t any wind or else I’m pretty sure the groom would have hit the waves – he’s an avid kitesurfer!

Ingeborg and Remco like to do things their way and they decided to hold their wedding reception in the afternoon. Their friends were their DJ’s and their musicians and everyone was dancing and singing and partying. Very cool. An impression of the party, including the cake topper at sunset…. (the bride and groom themselves were too busy being congratulated, watching performances and partying!). And the wedding rings. On little limes from the mojito-bar…

What an awesome day!

Ingeborg and Remco tied the knot on 11-11-11 and they weren’t shy about it! Lots of billboards all over Zandvoort announcing their wedding. Remco works in outdoor advertising and his colleagues had put all those billboards up. Awesome!

One image to tide you over, more about the great party that their wedding day was next week.

Have a great weekend everyone!