Lately I haven’t been writing nor posting much. Perhaps from a period when communication was difficult and I was wrapped up in myself. Nor was I making pictures.
Luckily I made a new friend during a recent trip to Chetumal. Nice enough fellow if a bit abused. Some might even call him “cute” although I see a diabolical side.
Weddings have been a two-sided sword in my life. Mine (ours) was considered hippy-like back in ‘69 and hated by the respective families. We eschewed having anything but a very private function in our favorite formal garden at Blithewood on the Bard College campus. It was limited to my in-laws who would have wanted a large, public gathering in suburban New York, a pair of friends from law school and the Reverend David Pierce.
David saved the day by making everyone comfortable as he invented a service that met the needs of marriage-bonding and charmed my wife’s parents with his blue eyes and flowing, blonde hair. He later “lost his calling” as an Episcopal minister, changed religions and went different ways. We became friends when he was, many years later, our editor for photographic essays of an academic bent for the Hudson River Regional Review.
The garden had been our favorite playground during college and was the place we returned each year until illness forced me to move us to Mexico. It was one of the ties that bind, a ritual pilgrimage that always brought us back to the time the bees buzzed by, David intoned all the words of bonding and the sun shone on the July blooms of the 19th c. enclosed garden.
Later, as a photographer, I shot one or two weddings a year for editors and friends. It never became a major part of my work but the intricacies of putting the wedding affair not only together but as an event that forever spells the nature of the relationship was made known to me. It ain’t easy! There are family frictions, tensions and worries, friends (and those who call themselves that) and associates and all the knots that bind those people together to each other and The Couple.
Beyond the emotional ties and bonds and the fears of actually “tying the knot” lay the myriad details of putting together a spectacular event that is to entertain everyone, please families who might not be as comfortable with each other as the wedding couple, and coordinate the food and venue, the band, flowers, honeymoon plans, Aunt Hattie and Grandmother Jill and all their needs and do it seamlessly, seemingly effortlessly and, if it all works, without anyone noticing that it was hard work to orchestrate.
And there is the photographer — picking one, paying one and being happy with the results. My rules for such a choice will be held for another time. I was a fine photographer and made, I thought, emotional and sensitive pictures in a photojournalistic fashion. But I was not a good wedding photographer because the mechanics of putting together albums and bookkeeping the thousand pictures for all those who wanted them was too far from my usual academic and industrial work. In these computer-days of digital photography, web-sites and emails, digital movement of images and services that will take digital files to create albums and send them to those who want them I might have looked for more weddings.
I was in upstate New York. Now that my time is spent in Mexico (where photography is very primitive and little understood) and in Miami which is conducive to both Miami Weddings and photography because of its sub-tropical light, exciting locations (Vizcaya comes to mind along with the Biltmore Hotel), great restaurants and a place far-flung family and friends look forward to visiting. I was directed to a web site that includes a terrific guide to creating a Miami Wedding.
This is the stuff of the modern world. The site offers up a directory of all the services needed to plan your own wedding spectacular or have a professional planner do it for you (like Geraldine Chaplin in the Robert Altman film, The Wedding). Naturally I was most interested in checking out photographers and found that they had ads for 9 photographers (in Miami — the site has scores of locations). Rodrigo Varela presented a great web presentation of photos in a sophisticated flash presentation (evocative, heart-felt pictures, too) as well as more formal photographers. The site, unlike me, also pays attention to all the details of the wedding process — bands, balloons, gowns, flowers, planning professionals, transportation services, ice sculptors, personal chefs, yachts (it is Miami, after all), Jewish wedding specialists, and, I love it!, personalized wedding chocolates.
The site is: 1 Wedding Source (.com): Miami for Miami Weddings.
This is Blithewood Garden in the Hudson Valley where we were married. Picking a spot you will want to remember and return to to celebrate a romantic time is an important wedding decision.