{by Lindsey from I Digress: Tales from a Baby-Starved Wingnut}

We are in a house of windows. In a glass house, which is ironic if you’ve been with me for the past 72 hours. Storms are rolling in back to back, rain is coming down in hard sheets. The wedding is outside. Or was supposed to be. Our host has an 80′s love music compilation CD playing in a house-wide stereo system. The bride stands at the window just outside of the yellow lamp light and watches the rain while REO Speedwagon plays in the background. I am oddly reminded of the movie Forces of Nature, where the bride waits in the hurricane for her groom.

It has been a long road to this day. The family is held together by gossamer threads of duty. The grandmother might not come, people are not speaking.

I don’t fit in with these girls. Of all the bridesmaids I am the only one that only knows the bride through the groom. I gravitate to the mother of the bride. Something about the entire day makes me need a mother.

****

I am getting my makeup done. The artist asks if I have babies. I say no, and don’t offer any explanation. When she asks me what I want my eyes to look like, I say dark and heavy.

****

I am getting my hair done. The hairdresser asks me if I have babies. I offer a slightly more hopeful answer than I gave the makeup artist and say, not yet! She does big, loopy curls in my hair while she eats a sandwich and I try not to worry about her dripping mayo on my back. She says her GPS brought her here, she has never been so far out in the country. I laugh. She says, seriously . . . where are we? I tell her the honest answer, that I don’t know. I am just as lost as she is.

****

Every hour the tension increases. The bride is screechy and stressed, her sisters hate her behind her back. Our host, her aunt, gives us a talk about Jesus Christ and His Plan. If His Plan is for rain on your wedding day, you accept it. She says: You have to bend to his will. Submit. What he wants is what you get. I think: Jesus sounds like an angry toddler. She says that one year her husband and her decided to celebrate their anniversary with Jesus. Her husband got her a card that said: Happy Anniversary to you, me and JC! The bride sets her plate down and walks out of the room.

****

The Aunt’s job is to be the time enforcer. In the last 15 minutes she yells the time left before we have to leave every minute. TEN MINUTES, she screams. Peter Cetera sings in the background. NINE MINUTES. My bag is packed by the front door, I stand there with my dress over my arm, it’s making sweaty creases in my skin. EIGHT MINUTES. When it gets down to the last two minutes the bride begins the epic meltdown. She is screaming at everyone except me, because I haven’t even gone near her in the last 2 hours.

*****

I am in the backseat of the car on the way to the ceremony. I hate the backseat, I get carsick. The maid of honor is driving. The bride is rocking back and forth with her veil neatly tucked in her stiff hair, chanting something about hating everyone. Her little sister is in the back with me. We are both texting people about how badly we want to be somewhere (anywhere) else. Her sister says: I swear, she is normally a nice person.

*****

We use umbrellas to shield her on the way in, because the groom is in the parking lot. When it’s time to put on her dress and its not fitting she screams and tells everyone to get away from her. The rain stops long enough to get our pictures taken outside. All of our heels sink into the mud. We forget that we are supposed to have bouquets. We are unhappy and tired but we smile radiantly any time someone raises a camera. I see B across the way, in his tux, and my eyes water. It’s the first thing that’s moved me all day.

{Originally published at Mommy Pie.}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on June 26, 2008

I own three bridesmaid dresses. I’ve been to countless wedding ceremonies. I’ve happily purchased hundreds of dollars worth of gifts for my friends’ celebratory passages into traditional family life.

Most of those unions have lasted. Some have not.

With my 40th coming up in just a few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about about time, and fate, and the very different, and sometimes unexpected, paths our lives all take.

However I got here, this is my life. I embrace it wholeheartedly. And I wonder, where’s the ceremony for singles who have found in themselves the one they’ve been looking for all along? What about the ones who, for better or worse, never do marry another?

I’d like to think that someday I will find someone to have and to hold. I do hope so. (Especially after getting to know so many of you married mamas through your blogs.) But, what if I don’t? It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Because I’m happy. I actually want what I have. And although occasionally, I do pine for little things here and there, in reality, I know all I need is family. No matter what shape it takes.

Hell, I may just wind up marrying myself.

I’d certainly never be accused of marrying for money. And there’s no one who’d love MP more. I’d never cheat on myself, and I’d never have to worry about divorce. I wouldn’t have a choice but to work through the hard times.

Not only would it symbolically celebrate my love affair with my daughter, it would serve as a reminder of my commitment to giving myself what I would give to a spouse. Love, time and respect.

I’ve got it all worked out.

1. THE PROPOSAL
Executed flawlessly. Because I’m a mind reader, I’d know exactly how I’d always imagined it. Definitely a story worth telling over and over.

And over.

{Originally published on inside emblem}

Our second time in Canmore and the second time the weather dropped in on us, covered the spectacular mountains, and rained a sad grey rain. But despite the rain, Alissia and Travis kept on with the plan. The ceremony started perfectly but, of course, the rain came and sent the chairs wobbling as everyone raced for umbrellas, brave wedding party and pastor standing strong, unmoved.

{Originally published on Melissa Jill’s blog}

I’m back in Phoenix having some great memories from my two weeks in the Bay area. Michelle and Brent were married Thursday in Half Moon Bay.

Brent is a farmer in Iowa and Michelle, originally from Arizona, has moved there to be with him. So this was a destination wedding for them.

This wedding was so special to me and here’s why. If I wasn’t already born into an amazing family, this is the family I would want to adopt me:

Originally published on Kellan Studios.

We booked Kristen’s wedding last fall, for the upcoming fall. Not
only is she incredibly funny, but she gets the award for most patient
“bride to be”. I say that because during our consultation she got a
phone call from her fiance. Not unusual, except that he was calling
from Djibouti, Africa. Charles was finishing out his last few months
with the military over in Africa. I am constantly amazed at technology
that she was chatting away with him in our living room and he is almost
1/2 way around the world!

We were so excited that they wanted to book an engagement session so
we could meet the illusive Charles. He was just how we expected him to
be, incredibly witty! We had soooo much fun with this couple shooting
around downtown and Old City Cemetery. We did not have to try hard to
get them to laugh. In fact, it was just the opposite, trying to get
them to be serious!

Can I make a personal note? This couple is TALLLLLLL! Charles is
6’4” and Kristen is 6’0…but had four inch heels on and Ryan is 6’6”. My
vertical is 5’2”. I felt like the little sister that was tagging along
16 inches below! Luckily, they let me play too.

Here are some of my favorites from our blisteringly hot session.

(click title for more)

Originally posted at [b]ecker’s Blog.

I was recently chatting with some friends at a party, and I was asked if I knew what my favorite wedding image was. I laughed at the notion that I could ever narrow it down to a single frame, but it did get me thinking of some of the more memorable images I’ve captured over the years, and today I’d like to share with you 20 of my all time favorite wedding photographs. Of course, if you ask me tomorrow, I may have a completely different set of images. I am always striving to create better images that capture moments in time that the subjects will cherish forever.

I define my style of photography, as capturing relaxed portraits, amazing details and real moments. I feel these images do a good job representing my abilities in doing just that.

These first few images are scans from back in the film days… the 90′s!

I absolutely still love this portraits of a bride from July of 1999. Her expression was real, and she was just a gorgeous person inside and out.

***

(click title for more)