Notes from My First Wedding Photography Assignment

Yesterday was a long day and today is already slated to be a longer one although there will not be a UFC event awaiting after the work is done.

Anyway, here are some thoughts as I prepare for today's wedding.

- When things start to happen, they will start to happen very fast and are unstoppable to retake a photo.
- Comfortable shoes are an absolute must.
- Eating or having some kind of snack is essential.
- Cloud cover is your best friend at an outdoor wedding.
- Tall centerpieces can be difficult to work around when taking long distance candids.
- There are some incredibly emotionally charged moments that are classic and timeless and impossible to capture again once they've passed.
- Memory cards are cheap, shoot five or ten times the number of pics you think you'll need.
- Every wedding is unique and wonderful in its own way.
- That memory card with all the day's photos on it is more precious than anything in whole world until its been downloaded and the photos backed up to DVD and an external hard drive.

I've got a couple of hours to get ready for my next wedding today. Time to get some materials printed off, cleaned up and ready to roll out.

Big Day, Big Week

Today is the first day of the biggest week we've had since I was laid off from the school district. In just under ten hours we'll be hosting our first ever Private Business Reception (PBR) for Kyani. With some luck we'll be filling our house with prospective distributors and customers and members of our team. It involves many steps including a clean house, finding a place to temporarily park Nande and our border hound (my wife's brother is visiting from Colorado and his big goofy friendly dog isn't so welcome at grandma and grandpa's house due to aged and inflexible cat already in residence), making sure our kids are occupied or at the neighbors for a little while.

And there's also making calls and trying to pull in folks we've already talked to to try and bring them to the PBR. The exciting thing about tonight is that we'll have one Kyani's executives here. He's one of the top earners in the company and, at the end of this week, will be getting the keys to his Kyani Escalade Hybrid at the national convention. If I were him, I'd be giddy with excitement!

On top of the PBR tonight, there is the aforementioned national convention taking place this next weekend. Almost everyone from our Northern California team will be attending and I would be but my weekend is already very, very stacked full of previously scheduled goodness.

I will be working as a professional photographer for not one but two weddings in two days this coming weekend. And, in between the two weddings, there's also the mma magnificence that is UFC 100.

Each wedding poses some significant challenges but all four of the participants are very easy going, good people and I'm really looking forward to commemorating their special days with my cameras.

Also, we'll be doing our first Skype video conference call a little later this morning with WindBlossom, who has joined us on our Kyani adventure after trying the products out and finding that her knees no longer hurt and her thinking is clearer.

It should be a really good week. And, with some luck, we'll be much further along in our Kyani dream by the end of the week. So much so that my wife may be one of the many that gets to walk the stage to receive her promotion in front of the entire company. That would be awesome! I wish I could be there but am looking forward to my weekend of photographic madness!

Conception Day

Today's a big day around my house. In addition to being the anniversary of our wedding some five years ago now, it is also the anniversary of the conception of my oldest son, Graydon.

Yes, he was a honeymoon baby.
No, we did not wait to have sex until we were married. It just worked out that way.

Five years ago today we were in a very different place, physically, mentally and emotionally. And I was just praying for nice weather as we were getting married out on the beach.

It was also the Santa Cruz city celebration night which meant there were fireworks shot off from the beach. We had a wonderful day all the way around until we eventually and finally passed out in our hotel room near the beach.

And eight months, three weeks and six days later, Grady arrived a day early. And life has never been the same. In a good way. Mostly.

Wedding Politics

Having gone through the delightful process that is putting on a wedding and having to put together a list of people to invite to the wedding I'm already well aware that there are concessions that must be made to keep from having a reception with 2000 people. Which would be fine if you've got an endless supply of money and could rent AT&T Park to house them all.

But reality dictates that some people will get invited over others. It is the nature of the process.

And sometimes the first tier invites aren't as able to come as you might have thought they were. So, sometimes, the couple will drop down a tier to try and fill out the wedding.

I know all of this, I understand it all and I accept it as part of the nature of the process.

But that still doesn't mean, in any way, shape or fashion, that I have any interest in being your wedding filler. I have no interest in being invited solely because others weren't able to make it.

Especially when the family member in question has either ignored or otherwise just decided to not respond to previous attempts to make contact and interact as two members of the family on the west coast. Not for a period of weeks or months but for a period of years.

Ignore me for several years, invite other members of my family in the first wave of invitations and then drop down to invite me and my family and you have some expectation of my family actually attending? To what point? Why would I have the slightest interest in the event? You've made it pretty clear you have zero interest in my life and my family. Why would you possibly think I would take an interest in yours?

And yes, I'm well aware of the potential hornet's nest I'm stirring up by posting this as I know family members read this and it is likely to get back to the party in question. But the honest truth is that I'm done trying to gladhand the long-strained relations with my extended family. I'm done putting on a smiling face to people who are strangers in everything but family tree. And I'm also well aware that the stock-in-trade response of email not having been received would be trotted out like some excuse horse. But it rings false, emails with misspelt addresses bounce and it isn't like there's no way to get, you know, MY email and contact me. Besides, I'm not stupid, I'm pretty capable of typing an email address correctly, verifying and trying it more than once. With no response.

Do I sound bitter? Maybe I am. Maybe I'm extending my personal life dissatisfactions onto interpersonal relations amongst my family that makes no sense and does nothing but increase the chasm between us. This could be truth, I could attempt to overcome and move beyond and forgive and forget.

I could also sprout wings out of my ass and horns on my shoulders but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen either. And believe me, if this sounds bitter and harsh then you should read the first couple of attempts. It would be a very bad day indeed if my draft posts somehow made it out into the wilds.

Exclusion

One of my ex-roommates got married this last weekend. I've known her and her family since I first came to Santa Cruz in 1995. Her older brother has been my longest and one of my most loyal friends.

But I haven't spent very much time with her for the last couple of years. I've got kids, she's a dancer and lives a very different life.

I did not get an invitation to the wedding and I have to say that I'm feeling disappointed and excluded. And wrongly excluded. But I understand a little bit about wedding politics and trying to contain the ever-swelling crowds that can descend on them and overtax them.

But there's a chasm between understanding and being okay with it. I feel overlooked and am pretty sad about the whole thing.

I don't know what I'll do the next time I do see her but I feel like I've lost a friend and have now strained relations with her family. I'm sure she didn't intentionally snub me, or at least I'd like to think she didn't intentionally snub me and my family. But there's really no way of telling since it is the height of poor taste to call her on it.

So I'll likely just let it go until I do see her again and then I don't know what I'll do.

But it does make me feel even more disconnected from my social circle back up in Santa Cruz. I am sooo ready to get out of Watsonville, you have absolutely no idea.