one wedding, hold the dressing

Is anyone here familiar with the term “vibrational energy”? If you Google it, you’ll come up with dozens of sites that want to sell you stones, bracelets and the like. If you Wiki it, you’ll be further confused.

There’s another meaning that some of you may get. It’s like, when you enter a room where someone who is either really distressed or really excited is, and if you’re vulnerable or sensitive, you can just feel that vibrational energy in the room. Now, you totally get what I mean, right? It can be good or bad, you can feel it or you could be putting it out to other people without even realizing it. My definition of it would be that it’s basically a tuition; a sensitivity to your surroundings.

Now, if you’ve ever been a bridesmaid or a maid of honor, you *totally* know what I’m talking about

As a photographer, an observer, I am susceptible to others’ vibrational energy. Sometimes it’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s a real drag. The energy I’ve felt from all my clients, and I truly mean all of them, has been wonderful. It’s the kind that makes me want to text Mr. Susan a bunch of x’s and o’s. In fact, I think I’m one of the few wedding photographers I know who doesn’t have a horror story about one of my brides or grooms. I like to think that my mood and my manner helps my clients; I don’t get freaked out or over excited about something that has gone, or could go, wrong. This is why: when I have my first meeting with a potential client, I give them 2 pieces of advice:

1. When you’re looking to hire a photographer, find someone whose work you love and with whom you could see yourself hanging out all day, because that’s pretty much what you’re going to be doing with him/her.

2. Don’t stress about the decorations and the cake and the seating arrangement and all that other stuff that gets the Bridezillas on TV to the breaking point. [Although I admit that watching them cry and throw things across the room is one of my guilty pleasures, I wouldn't want to encounter one in real life.] The only thing that matters, I tell them, is that they’re getting married to the person they love. After everyone is gone and all that planning is behind you, that truly is all that matters. You’re married.

And this is the reason that I love Naomi & Job’s wedding so much. It’s a totally stripped down version of the modern wedding ceremony. At the edge of a public park, dressed in nice, but not formal, clothes, and surrounded, literally, by their closest friends & family, Naomi & Job spoke their own written vows. Job’s father was the “entertainment.” He played a little harmonica and then sang a song and I remember the line, “…if you were a kiss, I’d be a hug.”

Other friends read poetry, another friend was their officiant. And in about 4 minutes, the whole thing was over. They just wanted to get married, and on that day, they just walked out onto the grass in the middle of the week where other people were walking with strollers or all sweaty & running with earbuds connected to their iPods. They walked out there, promised to be there for one another, and poof! That was it. They were married.

Keep this in mind. If you have 20 or 200 guests; if you have a 5-tiered cake or are munching at a local bakery afterward, if you’re wearing a dress from your closet or a dress from Vera Wang, you’re still there to get married. And that’s all that you’re there for.

So with much pleasure and a little warm & fuzzy tossed in, I present Naomi & Job’s 4-minute wedding.