My husband Paul and I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with hundreds of excited brides-to-be, grooms-to-be, Moms, and best friends yesterday. We hurt all over afterwards and were exhausted and had barely any voice left after yelling over the performances of the male dancers set up behind us, but it was a great experience. A lot of people commented that they enjoyed different parts of our setup, and it was a pleasure for me to see people pointing and smiling at the photographs I’d chosen to display. I am excited to follow up with the dozens of interested brides who liked my work and wanted to hear more about what I have to offer. One particularly cool lady asked me a very specific question that I thought was really smart – what are my ten favorite photographs. Personally, I think this would make a great blog post and would help a lot of people to understand my style, so I’m going to blog it later this week and email her the link.
In order to make the draw fair – since the papers we had people put in were all shapes and sizes and there’s even a business card with someone’s info in there – I’m going to number all the entries and use a random number generator from the internet to see who wins the $200 gift certificate we had up for grabs. I also was fortunate to have met with a number of fantastic vendors that I hope to soon add to my partners list, since quite a few people whose businesses I loved were interested in partnering up with me.
Almost everyone really loved the Trash the Dress. Some people were a little dubious until I explained that both women were celebrating anniversaries and the circumstances for both were really interesting and cool, and then they really appreciated them in a different way. One Mom and her daughter told me it was “god-awful” and “made a mockery of the institution.” Being the sticky sort, they probably would have been even more horrified if they’d known that I found their commentary both amusing and sad. I mean, I admit that it’s not for everyone, but the devotion so many people have to wedding dresses is much scarier in my opinion. Not that I don’t think you should value it, I just don’t think you should worship an object, and too many people do for my taste. To me I think it’s a whole lot better for the bride to value the marriage, not just the wedding; the husband, not just the dress. That’s my philosophy anyway, and probably that’s not for everyone either. But I do think that kind of stuff and event centered attitude about weddings contributes to eventually cheating or getting divorced, and I want the weddings I photograph to succeed.
