PhotoDude.com

Sat. Oct 26, 2002

Pre-Wedding Vignettes

Pre-Wedding Vignettes – Over the weeks of planning, I’ve been very observant. Observant is safe. In fact, if you’ve never been a groom before, you might save yourself some strife … and maybe even appendages … by learning from some of the things I’ve seen. And please keep in mind, this was a small wedding, and not our first. If it is a large wedding, multiply the stress level by ten. If it is the bride’s first wedding, multiply it by another ten. Below is just the tiniest tip of your potential wedding iceberg.

·  While this was very much our wedding, the planning and logistics were totally Susan’s baby. My initial trial balloon of her, me, and Reverend Elvis in Vegas remained airborne barely long enough to create a memory. Her far more earthbound plan involved her brother (a Baptist preacher) performing the ceremony, and her son giving her away (her Dad said he’d tried, and it didn’t take).

·  A wise groom-to-be quickly realizes the best thing he can do is keep his hands and fingers clear of the wedding machinery, lest he draw back a bloody nub. Only women are properly qualifed to operate The Machine, and the wise choice is to let them. If circumstances require, you may smile and nod approvingly, but keep your hands in your pockets! A wise groom operates on a “need to know” basis, and early on I made it clear I only needed two pieces of information; “where do I need to be, and when do I need to be there.” Once supplied with that, I put my hands back in my pockets, and stepped away from The Machine.

·  After a weekend recon trip in mid September, the bride-to-be reported there was a problem with one of the two pieces of information I had a need to know. The “where I need to be” portion had been a suburb town square with a gazebo and a fountain, but reconnaissance revealed the gazebo had been replaced with a bandstand, and this was, for some reason, a big problem. In order to help my small male brain comprehend, I was granted a third piece of information: “The way it’s set up now, there’s no way for me to make an entrance, and this is one day in my life when I am going to make an entrance.”

[Pause, with hands in pockets] “OK, so, now where do I need to be?”

“We’re going to do it at my brother’s church.”

“Same time?”

“Same time.”

Assuming that would solve the “entrance” issue, given the data I required, and with my extremities intact, I stepped away from The Machine.

·  Finding Susan’s ring and band happened easily and mostly by chance, not design. Kind of the way it should be. Finding my wedding band was such an exercise in frustration, I was left void of solutions and sanity. After one failure at a jeweler who didn’t actually have what their web site advertised (they showed what appeared to be a stock ring available for order, when it was a custom job that had never been picked up), I found another one I liked, online, from a local jeweler.

Three attempts to purchase the ring online resulted in failure, as the form rejected the purchase with an error message I could not fathom. In final frustration, I declared, “I’m going to go get a !@#%ing cigar band for the ceremony, and maybe someday I’ll be able to buy a ring I like. But it ain’t gonna !@#%!ing happen this !@#%!ing year! [degenerates into obscene incoherent babbling]”

Miracles do occur, though. About 15 minutes later, after mopping up the puddle of wrath I had become, Susan answered the phone to find a customer service representative from the jeweler asking if we’d had a problem trying to order something. An online vendor actually had someone tracking failed orders and used the info that was given to contact the potential customer and rescue the sale. Like I said, miracles do occur. I got my ring, and was finally satisfied.

·  During one of the last days of September, Susan went to the heavily marked countdown calendar on the side of the refrigerator to check something. I casually remarked that it would soon be time to flip over the page to the new month (the month of the wedding itself), and my remark was answered by a sound I’d never heard Susan make before. Or any creature. It was something between a short gutteral version of a primal scream, and the honk of a startled goose. “Argh-HONK!” Forever dubbed, “The Wedding Honk,” it comes out at times of pre-wedding stress, real or simply perceived. So when it happens, don’t let it startle you, just keep your hands in your pockets and it will pass.

·  After another Saturday reconnaissance trip (and these are grueling all day logistical battles), Susan remarked, “I finally got the shoes and the color I wanted [Pause] I think I’m going to be really happy.”

Remember, guys, it’s all about the shoes.

·  Except when it’s about the hair. You’d be surprised how quickly hair becomes an important part of the schedule. Back in August, Susan made the mistake of getting a haircut on her lunch hour one Monday, and, well, it was very traumatic for her. After she’d engaged in a few rounds of “self therapy,” I told her, “you might want to go see a real professional, like on a Saturday morning when they’re working instead of during Monday ‘training hour,’ while you still have some hair left. And put down those scissors.” She eventually did just that, and only after her hair had been assessed and reconstructed was the date set … with a final strategic trim scheduled three weeks before The Event.

But I shouldn’t have even snickered about the importance of hair. One morning, three weeks or so before The Event, I grabbed my personal moustache trimmer in my personal bathroom, turned it on and ran it through one side of my moustache, in the same manner I always do. It instantly sounded like a bush hog in a bad field and spit out huge chunks of ‘stache. I recoiled in shock, and looked at the height setting, which is always set on “4 – Well Earned, Mature, But Neat Length,” and saw that it had been moved to “1 – Youthful Grunge Stubble.” Thus, one third of my ‘stache looked like something from Miami Vice. Combined with the remaining more mature length, it looked vaguely Hitler-like.

And I knew how the setting had been changed. The previous Friday night, Susan and her son, who has a Youthful Grunge Stubble, had come separately to a gallery showing we attended. I figured (correctly) he’d decided to “freshen up,” changed the setting, and then left it there like a little toiletry land mine waiting to blow off my ‘stache.

I went to lunch that day with my bride-to-be, and explained I was a bit displeased with her son, and why. In fact, I think I put it thusly: ” I won’t do it before the wedding, so he won’t be disfigured in the pictures, but after we get back from the honeymoon, I’m going to hog tie him and shave stripes in every patch of hair on his body.”

[Pause to consider that I might be serious] "It’s really not that noticeable" [barely stifled giggles]

“Fine. Let’s cut one side of your hair to one third the length of the other side, and see if it’s noticeable.”

“OK, it’s noticeable.” Intonated as a question: "I love you" (translation: you’re not so mad at my progeny we aren’t getting married, are you?)

· You might think that a photographer and avowed creative control freak such as I would be obsessively concerned about his wedding photos, and assert expertise in that one area, if no where else, even at risk of losing an appendage to The Machine.

You would be wrong.

There’s probably a half dozen highly qualified photographers on whom I could have legally and morally imposed, “hey, as a gift, would you please shoot our wedding, oh dear friend of many years? I don’t trust anyone else” ... and I could have gotten away with it. The problem is, I’ve been on the recieving end of such a supplication, and it’s not a spot I want to put anyone else in. Not without paying them full price for their time. So that was never an option (begging favors, or paying four figures for a wedding photographer).

We decided on the disposable approach (although we did “splurge” on the Kodak Max “HQ” and even got a couple of black and white disposables for the pro shooters, to get the “journalistic” wedding look). Make your audience work for their invitation by taking a picture now and then. But we still weren’t quite on the same page. One night Susan asked me for direction on what to tell people to do with the cameras, as she was planning on attaching a frilly ribbon and note of instruction to each one.

I picked up the camera, and pointed to the directions on the back that say, in bold red letters, [1] Charge, [2] Aim, [3] Shoot, [4] Wind. I said, “that’s four one syllable words that say it all. I can’t improve on that. Just give people the cameras.”

“But don’t we want to tell them what to do with them?”

Anyone who doesn’t know what to do when given a camera at a wedding or reception, I don’t know anything I can say that will change that. No matter what you tell them, there will be people who can’t follow directions, and those who do better than your directions ever anticipated. It’s known as “the shotgun approach”: Give a about dozen people cameras containing about 400 total frames, and somebody will make art. I figure either way we’re getting our money’s worth; either some decent candid real moments, or “look, Danny had his finger over the lens and cropped off your head.”

Both bring smiles and memories, at a bargain price.

·  A groom-to-be should realize that “a small wedding” is a very relative thing. Silly me, with our talk of just immediate family and a couple of close friends, I’d somehow gotten it into my head there’d be about 16 people there. I don’t know how I came up with that number, but that’s what I envisioned. A small wedding.

One night I hear Susan on the phone, talking to one of the other operators of The Machine. I try not to listen in, as it might compromise mission security for me to know more than is necessary, but I can’t help but overhear, “I think the guest list is final, and it’s about 36 people.”

[Hands WAY out of pockets] “THIRTY SIX?!? How did we get to thirty six?!? I thought this was a small wedding!”

Susan quickly explained that it added up fast, once you include our four siblings, and their spouses, and their children, and a few close coworkers, and a former boss…

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I did the only safe thing I knew to do. I reached over next to The Machine and pulled the plug out of the wall. “Tell your fellow machine operators that Scotty the Janitor says this machine is overheatin’, and safety issues dictate that he be given non-appealable veto power over any additions above 36. The Machine can’t take no more, Cap’n.”

I was lucky, gentlemen. I managed to get my hands back in my pockets unscathed. You might not be so fortunate, especially with a first time bride. Pick your spots wisely. You’re going to need those fingers the rest of your life.