Photography is a tricky thing.1
Photography is both art and science. It is record and story. It is truth and fiction.
From the moment we enter the wedding planning world, we start to develop a love-hate relationship with photographs. First, you’re bombarded with brightly saturated, shallow depth-of-field pictures of cute and trendy must-haves. If you’re anything like me, you likely got wide-eyed with the possibilities… and then you got pissed off. This stuff costs how much? Do they think I’m freaking Martha Stewart over here? I don’t have time to make 200 pinwheels by hand! These expectations are ridiculous!
Then, you’re bombarded with photographs of other weddings. At first, they look amazing. Thirty weddings in, you suddenly realize that the joke is on you, because you’ve clearly been looking at different details of the same exact wedding shoot. All the brides and grooms have now blended into one cute, hip, impossibly thin couple with a propensity for adorably mismatched vintage place settings. You gradually realize that the style blogs are full of shit.
Somewhere along the way — probably in self-defense — you begin to scoff at the phrase blog-worthy. Blog-worthy? Whatever. We are real people with real weddings. We come in every size, shape, color, backstory, and age bracket available. We have ugly cries and mountains of stress and poorly-crafted decorations and half-assed centerpieces. Oh, we are worthy in every sense of the word, dammit — we’re just not going to be featured on Style Me Pretty or Snippet & Ink any time soon. As in, like, ever.
So then you switch to only looking at photographs of “real” weddings. Ah, finally, a place to call home. A place where the people look different and the sentiment can’t be faked. But that’s not the best plan, either. Because, oh my god, how do these people still manage to look so amazingly good? They seem so genuine, happy, and emotional. Everyone is so present in their own individual moments. Everything looks like it came together so well, and without a hint of drama. The guests are all smiling and crying. Somehow, all of their outfits are better than the ones you’re considering for your own wedding. All of their details are more poignant than your own. It all looks so effortless. And even while your heartstrings are being tugged, your brain is lamenting the fact that your wedding could never, ever, ever look like this.
Or maybe, after all, it was just me who went through this. The endless cycling between scoff and swoon; covet and resent.
Understandably, I developed a bit of anxiety around wedding photography. Because I understood what it felt like inside the planning of my own wedding, and it did not seem to line up with what I was seeing on my computer screen. I didn’t feel coordinated. I didn’t feel prepared. I didn’t feel pretty. I didn’t even necessarily feel happy — at least at first. From the outset my wedding seemed like a useless pile of last-minutes, halfhearteds, and coulda-shouldas. I was afraid that I shouldn’t expect very much to come from it.2
Then, just a few weeks after the wedding, I saw the first pictures our photographer Christina Richards posted on her blog. And I thought: Oh, my god. My wedding looks blog-worthy.
And I loved it.
And I was confused as hell about this.
It took me a long time to sort through it. Hell, even now, as I write this, I’m not sure I quite understand. I feel like I spent so long alternately railing against the relentless visual imagery and succumbing to it that I almost feel embarrassed that my wedding photographs look so good. Does this make me fake, too? Am I a style blog waiting to happen?
No. Of course not.
Am I suggesting that the only way to make your wedding look really good is to hire a professional photographer?
No. Of course not. Meaning isn’t generated via photographs. And if professional photography isn’t your bag, don’t do it. Spend your money on something you care about more.
Here I feel the need to wrap this up with some sort of call to action. A proposal to redefine the meaning of blog-worthy, perhaps. A rallying cry to take back our self-worth from the badlands of other-wedding-envy. But no. What we need is some good old-fashioned sense kicked into us. We need to stop listening to others.3 We need to stop caving in so easily to doubt. We need to stop feeding those voices that say I could never look like that or my wedding could never be that nice / pretty / cool / sincere / relaxed.
Because I saw my wedding from the ugly, messy inside. And what came out of it, both on film and in real life, was still beautiful. No, you can’t see the shitty stuff that went on behind the scenes in my photos. You can’t see all the stress and tears and hard work and late nights. You can only see the beauty of that day, and the love. And what I said up there, that meaning cannot be generated via photography? I mean that. But what’s also true is that a good photographer can take the best parts of your day and make art out of them.
Go. Please go and look at our wedding photos on Christina’s blog. If you like the photos there, please leave her a kind comment. She sure as hell deserves it.
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1 Okay, this totally goes completely against the tone of this post, but whenever I read over this line I hear it spoken in my head in the same way Rick James said “Cocaine is a hell of a drug” in that one Chappelle Show skit. No? No? Come on.
2 I mean, except the happiness that comes from being married, of course.
3 Easy as pie, non?
just took a peek at your pictures and they came out great! I love what sweet candid shots she got! those were my favorite of ours too, the sneak peeks of the day rather than the posed stiff ones. this blog worthy business is so nuts. we are blogworthy since we have blogs people enjoy reading. I like your pictures a thousand times more than any staged design sponge wedding
this whole post i was all “me too! me too!” so glad you said this because i couldn’t have found the words to say it myself. this is amazing. all of it.
your photos are beautiful. christine did a great job.
and who is the happy gal in the mustard yellow dress? my sis was my MOH and wore the exact same thing.
Now I have that Rick James line in my head. I think I’m ok with that, though.
Photography fetishizing aside; these pics are amazingsauce. Also, I totally remember when APW first plugged Christina, and she hadn’t done more than one wedding yet, but her photos just had this amazing ethereal, otherworldliness about them, and her rates were awesome, and I was hoping that someone closer to SF than me would take a risk on her. I’m so psyched one of those folks was you, and damn if it didn’t pay off.
Also, on an entirely superficial note, I *love* your hair, not least because it’s similar to P’s (of What Possessed Me), and the two’s of you, with your very different but very awesome weddings, and hilarious writings about said weddings, never fail to make me laugh and make me think.
RE: Christina, TOTALLY, on all counts. She was a dream and a steal all in one package. I’m crazy glad for her!
Also, awww, thank you. I started following P’s blog a few months ago and she’s amazing.
I would just like to say, “Charlie Murphy!”
I’m still at the stage where I feel like the first half of your blog, but I really hope I will feel like the second half of your post after the wedding.
Also, your photos are gorgeous, as are you and the Beau.
DARKNESS!
Oh. Right. Ahem.
You know what? I’m going to hedge my bets that you will feel like the second half after all is said and done.
Also: thank you.
oh and in reference to the first footnote: yes, that is not how I will hear it in my head. UNITY!
Oh my god BEAUTIFUL. So beautiful. Timeless.
Dude, I felt the exact same way about the wedding photos. Not so much the blog-worthy bit, although that was in the back of my mind as well, but just wanting those gorgeous photos that take your breath away. (When trying to choose a photographer while adhering to a fairly limited photography budget, no less.) Our wedding was effing great, but I didn’t feel pretty or . . . photo-worthy. I felt happy and HOT. (No, that’s not necessarily the same thing.) Still, we’re incredibly happy with our photos, and I’m not quite sure why I doubted that they wouldn’t be lush. Because they are.
“But whatโs also true is that a good photographer can take the best parts of your day and make art out of them.”
We definitely did, and I’m glad you found one of those too, fo shizzle . . .
Love this post, love the photos, and we’re going to have to have a conversation about those cookies at some point.
I’m ready and willing when you are, because they were AWESOME.
And thanks!
I was pleasantly suprised when I saw our photos as well, because I actually looked like those other brides – you know, the ones I’d always assumed must have been incredibly calm and joyous and “so present in their own individual moments.” Well I didn’t feel most of those things but somehow the photos capture it anyway – those emotions were there and our photographer found them amongst the messy ones and I’m so glad yours did too. Your photos really are beautiful.
“We need to stop caving in so easily to doubt.” – Yes, yes, and yes.
Your photos convey such beautiful moments in your day! I think that’s awesome. And I think focusing on the beautiful moments helps to minimize the the disappointment of the non-ideal moments, over the long-term. Cling to the good, right?
And that comes from my own thinking about my own experiences. Not trying to speak for anyone else. ๐
Oh yes, yes and yes!
Your photographs are magnificent but as you say they are us looking in. Whilst I think I can feel the fabulous emotions from the pictures I will never know what the truly represent.
(You do look amazing though!)
Another “me too” sorta message. Your pictures are so effin’ blog-worthy, dude. This whole post is basically the reason why I started doing that “unfake bride” thing on my bligblog. It started off as kind of a joke/favor for a photog friend, but so many people liked it, I kept doing it. And you know, it’s really interesting because now that I do the posts, I get to see all these wedding pics from start to finish with all levels of photographers. The are all so beautiful. There’s so much emotion in all the weddings, whether is be held in a cathedral or a backyard. I’m so lucky that I have an opportunity to do it!
And I am simply stewing with wedding envy over here. So, so, SO amazing.
i love the photos.
i also love this post. i’m going through this phase now. still feel a little bit like a baby in the world of the real brides i admire in the process…but i get it. definitely bookmarked this post for later as well..
you are a brilliant writer.
Thank you for sharing your photos with us, in the end. And thank you even more for sharing your conflicted feelings. I feel like there’s some amount of pressure to just always love everything physical and emotional about your wedding after the fact but I’m pretty sure that’s not the reality for most people.
Can I just say, these photos are amazing??? I couldn’t stop looking at them! You looked gorgeous.
Ahhhhhh!!! SO GORGEOUS.