Weddings

Partners…tied together by stuff too difficult to explain to someone new.”

One of my jobs is wedding photographer, so I have the privilege and honor of seeing a lot of couples tie the knot. And, while all weddings are similar in goal, each is unique in execution.

Some weddings are very laid back and casual…maybe it’s a second marriage, or maybe the couple is so low-key and in love that they are able to remain focused on what really matters - which is that they are having a ceremony to formally and publicly unite their hearts, minds, and lives – to be followed by a party to give their friends and family a chance to celebrate that decision with them.

Other weddings are such complex three-ring circuses that even Barnum & Bailey couldn’t keep things on track. One that comes to mind involved 6 attendants each for the bride and groom, 12 junior bridesmaids and groomsmen, 4 ring boys and flower girls, and 4 long divorced-some-remarried-with-new-children parents.

Another involved a groom who had, to his credit, been a UGA football player, so he had something like 15 groomsmen, to the bride’s 9 bridesmaids. They traveled in “pods” (as the wedding coordinator called them) down the aisle, because the groomsman-to-bridesmaid ratio was so generous that one bridesmaid preceded two groomsmen down the aisle…A lovely wedding that, but so many people!

Some weddings are multi-cultural or racial, which makes for great pictures, as the two cultures bump up against each other in honor of the union that has just occurred…One family brightly clad in the formal regalia of their customs, the other dressed in the prim and proper pastels their celebrations demand…

Those weddings are fun because there are two different kinds of food, and two different types of music, and many (for each of the two cultures involved…) potentially unsettling traditions that, in the spirit of the event, have to be experienced…Christians being spun in the air in chairs by Jews…Ceremonies ending with the smashing of glasses and signing of documents called Ketubahs…Women in saris and a bride’s body painted with henna - little sparkling dots called “bindis” on her forehead…

Before one of those weddings I learned it is a tradition for the henna painted all over the bride’s body to include the groom’s initials, and that him looking for his initials is a bit of wedding night ice breaker…Pretty good tradition, I’m thinking, given the obvious wedding night jitters I’ve seen on the nervous faces of some of the couples I’ve photographed…

The ceremonies are all different, too – some pastors and officiants are more inspired, involved and joyful than others…There is the minister (or in one case, married pair of ministers, which I thought was really sweet) that has watched the bride grow up, maybe having even baptized her as an infant…And there is the hired officiant for the destination wedding who is no more known to the couple than “Adam’s Tom Cat” (as my Gramma would call a complete stranger.)

One of the “Adam’s Tom Cat” officiants had a really nice message during the ceremony, as he had the couple not only hold, but look at their hands being held together.

“Look at these hands you hold today,” he said. “For these are the hands which will hold yours on the best and worst days of your lives…These are the hands you will hold when you are sick and when you are well…When your children are born and when – God forbid – something wrong happens to them…These are the hands you will turn to for comfort, your whole lives long…And, they are the last hands you will hold, as you leave this earth, thankful that you had each other as company all the days of your lives…”

Wonderful message, that…And, there was a really inspired, fired up minister at a multi-cultural wedding talking about how hard marriage is, and that “what you are doing today is agreeing to be the loudest voice at the 50-yard line” when your spouse succeeds, and “the only voice left in the dark stadium where everyone else has gone home” when your spouse fails…He talked about how what makes a couple a couple – each couple special unto itself – is the private time, jokes and laughs that no one else knows about.

“I guarantee you that today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and many days after that, something will happen between the two of you to cause you to laugh - deep belly laughs – and no one else will notice or have been there. But years from now, something will trigger a memory of that event and that laughter, and you will both smile – no matter how old you are, or how long you’ve been married…That is the friendship and union you are entering into today,” that minister said.

And, what a fine thought that is…For all of us old married couples and all of those newlyweds being photographed…A club, exclusive membership, only you and your best friend for life get to belong…Forever, or at least “’til death do you part”…What a grand adventure, and what a fun thing to get to experience each time a couple chooses me to capture those particular memories…an honor and an privilege.