remembering

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68730029Originally uploaded by Queue_D.

Alot of you don’t know that I am a wedding photographer.

i’ve been shooting weddings as a serious amature/semi professional shooter since I was about fifteen, and actually if you know anybody who is getting married I’d love to shaadow their paid photograhper for free, but that is neither here nor there.
I have shot probably thirty weddings and watched the debachery unfold with a chuckle and shake of the head. Everything from bridezillas to psycho inlaws, and at a wedding I wasn’t the photograhper for – the limo service burned down.
As a result at some point I decided I wanted to marry in a beach ceremony. I figured with enough notice, anybody who wanted to be there could. And we could have a wedding party/reception when we got back. (we never got around to that)
So when it actually came to really planning my wedding some of me wanted to do the big fluffy wedding but there was no guarentee that it would not become the psycho event I had witnessed countless times from the sidelines. Besides, I’ve never really been that girl, who could blow a couple hundred bucks on shoes, let alone several thousands on a wedding. Althought I really, really want to be – I know I have a shoe whore in side me just dying to get out.
And there were so many reasons why the St. Louis wedding just wasn’t gonna happen. We know to many people, okay “I” know too many people, as does my mother, and father and my grandparents, and if we could have gotten a tentative guest list under a hundred people – I might have thought about it longer, but the original guest list for my wedding, before any cuts at all was around three hundred.

how about, i’m not feeding three hundred unless you change my name to Jesus and give me five loaves and a couple of fish .

I didn’t want to drag a bunch of people into buying dresses they would never wear again. Bridesmaids are supposed to be your FRIENDS PEOPLE! Have you looked in a brides maid catelog recently? DUDE. Not even on my worst enemy. Then, I wasn’t comfortable in a church as a member, and didn’t want to marry in just any church,so I chose the only place I had ever really felt right next to God, the ocean.

Jerry isn’t the first man to ask me to marry him, well technically he is. although I have been engaged before, that engagement was kind of assumed, discussed and stated rather than really what I wanted. It was kinda of like – we’ve been together for ever so what do we do now? I guess we could get married. Well okay.
With Jerry I wanted to be his wife, to face life next to him, connected, attached, to belong with him. So when he asked, I was STUNNED even though I knew the question was coming. Looking back – I think apart of me didn’t really think he would ever ask, and then that he KEPT a secret from me. Which at the time was unhead of. Jerry is the king of “I was thinking about….” rather than just executing. So I was stunned at that. He was hoping for tears, I was glad I didn’t punch him for getting one over on me.
So we made the plans. My sisters dress costs thirty bucks as I recall. shes worn it four times since at least. she chose my wedding colors when she picked her dress. It was off the rack at a local store a simple summer dress. My mom found my dress – it was a hundred a thirty bucks at the same store as my sisters dress. Jerrys linnen shirt, pants and accessories cost more than my dress. Then we, along with roughly twenty of our closest relatives, and our Cammy, stood on a bluff over looking the ocean while we exchanged vows. The most stress we encountered was trying to get some relatives to come who, simply, would not. Including my brother who MISSED THE PLANE- cause he didn’t have a valid drivers licence. ummm… HELLO?!?! right.
What i remeber most about my wedding was that I simply felt safe. I was not afraid of what was happening, I wasn’t terribly nervous, no more nervous than performing a poetry show. I felt clear and light. Easy. I woke up early – excited – and took a walk on the beach, fell asleep in a hammock for a while, kicked my toes in the water walked up to breakfast and found my aunt and uncle and a fair amount of our wedding party about to go play in the water for a while, had a litte breakfast, then went to get dressed. I asked my dad if he was okay with this – he said yes, and we started heading down to the ceremony at two o’clock, I swear we were back on the beach by four thirty.
Which was pretty cool in its self.