The Year of the Wedding

It is a distinct possibility that 2012 will go down as the year of the most weddings ever officiated. It’s only the first day of June (historically a very popular month to say “I do,” I might add) and I can count several weddings I’ve attended. Before the summer ends, I will have been in two weddings and photographed a third. I have a dish on my end table in the living room that is filled with wedding-ish invites, ranging from the actual blessed event to showers and bridal luncheons. I access Facebook with anticipation, wondering whose status has changed today from “In a Relationship” to “Engaged”. 

My bank account has seen the effects of all this as well. I have a standard price range for wedding gifts and, if I’m being honest, I’d probably better go ahead and confess that I have a standard gift as well: Target giftcard. So I don’t like printing registries or finding the “18-piece Antebellum Sterling Silver Service Utensil Collection,” which is invariably impossible to locate. Judge me.

Beyond the actual wedding gift, there’s the “girly” shower git to buy as well, if you’re a friend of the bride, and trust me, the frills and the lace do not often run cheap. You’ll breath much easier when you darken the doors of the delicates provider of your choice if you can rope a pal into going in with you.  

Your financial trouble may end there...if you’re not in the wedding, that is. If you are, I’m sorry. I’m a bridesmaid twice this year, and I must say that the ladies getting married (congrats Jordan and Liv!) did an excellent job of finding their bridesmaids really affordable (I’m trying to keep it chic by avoiding the word “cheap”...but it would apply) dresses. I’m talking sticker price of  under $30. I have great friends. In addition to this, they both--unbeknownst to each other--settled on the same color shoe so I can kill two wedding-white love birds with one Vera Wang size 8 1/2 nude color stone. But you should probably not dwell too long on my good fortune...this isn’t really the norm. 

Money aside, there’s the actual day of the wedding to consider...and days before the wedding, in some cases. Our first wedding of the year was a big one. My husband's best friend from school got married, and Todd was the best man...and cake designer/decorator. He did this incredibly brilliant (like himself) bronze cake, with a huge cake ball decorated like the Dailey Planet and a motorized Superman actually flying around it! The thing was sharp, no doubt about it, but the creative juices required to assemble it had leaked out all over my living room floor. I'm not sure how the bride and groom's houses faired, but my place definitely looked like a ransacked wedding central.

I was just thinking this week how much of a person’s day they are willing--nay, obligated--to surrender to the social event that is the wedding. Especially if they are in the actual ceremony. For instance, I’ll arrive at the wedding I’m in next week at 10:00 am, and will probably leave, exhausted, at about 5:00 pm. That’s almost an entire work day for most of the country. Add on the three or so hours I’ll spend at the rehearsal the night before, and I’m making overtime. 

But when it’s all over, the screams and maniacal waving of the be-ringed left hand, the shower invitations and white wrapping paper (because who wraps a bridal shower gift in circus tent stripe-color paper because they didn't have anything else remotely appropriate...moving on...), the choice of music and cake flavor, the new dresses and incredible achy feet at the end of the day, everyone thinks back at how much fun the last few months have been. It’s been great to see so many people I know prepare to tie the knot with their beloved this year.

 I’ve heard this is just my time in life, that it won’t always be like this. I’m “at the age” of weddings. In a couple of years, I’ll be “at the age” of babies, and with the kind of action going down this year, that age will probably be the second Baby Boom. Regardless of the “age” I find myself in at any given point, though, I hope I can come out the other end of it saying what a good time it’s been... 

I do love a good wedding. :) 

This was taken at a wedding I photographed last month. Congrats Coupers!