Clare's Wedding Day (and why I won't do this professionally)

While we had planned to go to Cincinnati for Cousin Clare's wedding, and we had planned to stay with Cousins Dave and Meghan (and Rufus!), we hadn't given much thought to what we'd do, oh, the other 90% of the time we were up there.  Until...Meghan e-mailed me.  And in her sweet, adorable Meghan way, she said (I'm paraphrasing here), "Hey, so, Clare doesn't want to see any men before her wedding, so Mike's gotta get outta the house that day since that's where we're getting dressed, so he can hang out with the guys in the wedding party at the pub.  Oh, and since you can't go with the guys to the pub because you're a girl and you have cooties and the men would feel obliged to not say f*ck and do other manly things like burp and fart around you, and we don't have anywhere else for you to go when we kick you out of the house, you can hang out with us.  'kay?"

Sweet!

I thought this for two reasons:

1.) The Z women of Cincy are capital F.U.N.  I mean, these girls make laughing an Olympic sport.  One must prepare one's abdominal muscles for gales of laughter for hours on end.  It takes endurance.  Trust me.  I know this.

and 2.) PHOTO OP!

Clare is one of those remarkable women who looks good in every damn photograph taken of her.  She is beautiful inside and out (hard to tell where she's more beautiful, really), and smart as a whip.  If she weren't so damn sweet and adorable to boot, I'd resent the hell out of her.  Anyway, I knew that, if she'd let me, I could get some really great shots.

So, naturally, I butted right into her wedding day and stuck a big ol' black lens in her face.  The 17-55 f/2.8 to be precise.  She was gracious enough to let me document The Event before The Event, that is, the pre-wedding preparations.

With mimosas, no less.

Okay, so let's add this up: fun girls, great shooting, and mimosas.  That pretty much equals heaven in my book.  It was like I was in the wedding party, without having to do The Hair and The Face and The Dress. 

The photograph above was captured in Meghan's kitchen, after The Hair but before The Face.  Look at that...as if she needs a single atom of make-up.  Anyway, it's my favorite of the lot, which is saying something as I made a haul that day image-wise.

Now is the time where my mom starts chirping her favorite song, You Should Do This For A Living.  So I will stop before she hits the refrain and say this:

• 99.9% of brides are not as calm, cool, and collected as Clare.
• There are way too many brides who require beer goggles to look good, and Nikon doesn't make  a decent set that I'm willing to put in front of a lens.  I assisted a wedding photog in the past, and know that no matter how much you spend on gear it still can't perform plastic surgery - too many brides complain that your images made her look unrealistically fat, puffy, red, snaggle-toothed or all of the above, when she actually is, in reality, all of the above.  "Does this lens make my ass look big?"
• Four words: mother of the bride.
• I don't want to work weekends, and weekend nights, through the best parts of the year.
• Clare didn't know I was shooting until I showed up and pulled a honkin' camera out of my bag.  Which takes the pressure off.  I don't like pressure with photography.  Takes all the fun out of it.  And there's no higher pressure in photography than a wedding day, which typically can't be thrown back together for a photographic mulligan.
• When you're working a wedding, they typically frown upon you helping yourself at the open bar.

This is all a round-about way of saying thank you to Clare for letting me share her special day.  And telling anyone who reads this, "No, I don't do weddings."