by Director of Photography, Molly M. Peterson, photos by Molly M. Peterson and Liz Elkind
The idea for our cover happened during one of our winter staff meetings, over lunch with local wine (any wonder?) We wanted to cover local weddings but wondered how to do it in a way that was distinctively “Flavor” and didn’t look like every other cover of a wedding magazine. I’ve been photographing weddings myself outside of Flavor since 2006, and I’ve seen all sorts of wedding decor and wedding magazines. I was a bit stumped: I didn’t necessarily want a bouquet — although we have some gorgeous florists using local flowers in the area. And although brides are beautiful, how would her face on the cover mean “local wedding with local food?” We could have had a foodscape, but would it necessarily convey “wedding”? Enter our incredibly gifted and creative editor, Pam Hess. As soon as the idea hit her, that was it and she started to sketch it up. We had planted our little summer cover seed. We forgot all about the sketch until this past week and it turns out that it looks oddly similar to what we ended up for our cover – funny how that happens. So what is cuter than baby goats crashing a locavore wedding? If you ask me: nothing. Except maybe baby goats and chicks and piglets…but let’s not get away with ourselves here.
Anita Gupta of Maliha Creations was found via Twitter and was more than willing to make us two **incredibly** beautiful cakes, even knowing they may be quickly demolished by goats. To be honest, I was hoping we’d have a belly-flopping goat onto the cakes, but they were more interested in the surrounding decor of veggies and fruit. The Garvin family are friends of mine and some of the most genuine and honest people I know. I asked them to host the photo shoot because I knew their babies are raised well and loved. There was one goat in particular — as you can see from the photos below — that stood out: a beautiful chocolate brown goat named Yoshi who certainly made sure we all thought she was the cutest of her goat friends. She also put a baby goat butt print into each of the two cakes. And we should note: the real glasses filled with champagne didn’t break – they weren’t even knocked over once?!
I won’t bore you with the rest of the details so you can get to the photos below, but I do have to give a special thanks to a few that helped make this shoot happen and, can I just say, my job is pretty awesome sometimes!
Goats: Bearly Alpines : especially Ryan and Sue Garvin for their patience, sharing their space with us, and their impeccably raised and well-behaved goats.
Cake: Maliha Creations (Charlottesville)
Picnic-Table Delivery (as if he had free time in his farming day to do it for us): Mike Peterson
Behind the Scenes photos: Liz Elkind
Set Design: Melissa Harris (your publisher) and Pam Hess (your editor)
