wedding thoughts

For the past few weeks I have been working for a wedding photographer up in Temecula, helping him edit weddings. I have also started a working relationship with another wedding photographer just down the street. I am hoping to make a little extra cash, while learning the business side of weddings, marketing and digital workflow. It just might be the right move for me in the next year or so. I realized that I like shooting wedding because even though the structure of the day is fairly static, the wedding itself is performative and as the photographer you have a roll, as much as you’d like to be active or passive veiwer, in that. The experience of it is similar to teaching for me. I have the plan, know what to expect from wedding to wedding, but like lesson plans, everyone is going to interpret the structure differently.

I have edited a handful of weddings now, going frame by frame through an emotional navigation of someone else’s important day. Sometimes I choke up when I see how the bride and groom gaze at each other, locked in a moment that transcends the sixtieth of a second that it took to expose. Other times, I wonder how people can justify spending what they do on the details of one day.

This summer I attended three weddings. Charlotte and Sandy’s fabulous Gatsby-esque Vineyard wedding; Miki and Hiro’s formal Catholic wedding in Japan, complete with eight course haute cuisine French meal and no partying what so ever; and Joe and Skylar’s decadent Wichita party with chocolate fountains and lots of dancing. The experience of each wedding was distinct and individual against the rest. As different, I guess, as the bride(s) and groom themselves. But the formula, the repertoire, is pretty standard. Where did all this ritual, the flowers, the cake eating, the dances, the bouquet throwing, come from?

This weekend, I’m off to the bay area to visit friends and meet up with Trent and his family at his cousin’s wedding at a vineyard in Napa. Like the weddings I am editing, I will know nothing about the bridal couple. I will be voyeur only, and wine drinker, of course.