The wedding

On Sat. morning Donna and I headed to Shelby to photograph a wedding that her mother hired her out for, and one she had kindly let me tag along to in order to practice my photography skills at.
We arrived slightly before the time Donna was told the wedding started in order to scout out some locations for photographs.
The theme was “country”. The invitation said “jeans are welcome, please no cut-offs or belly bearing shirts”
The sight that welcomed us was, a trailer that housed the bride, and the groom who was in t-shirt and jeans smoking a cigarette.
We spoke briefly with the Mother of the Bride about what was wanted for the photographs which can be summed up as “whatever” and “some in the playground equipment”. The ceremony was in a open grassy portion of the facility- there was a bare arch with little paper wedding bells floating in the breeze- apparently they hadn’t thought about decorating the arch until the night before when someone mentioned it, so they had contacted someone to bring some flowers, which hadn’t arrived yet.
No guests had arrived yet.
We did our scouting outside and then moved inside to take a look at what was available inside.
Nothing.
Unless you count harried women trying to pull a reception off with very little help. It was so painful to watch that I put my bag down and went in and started helping with what I could.
Fruit cutting, table decorating…bossing people around to make the cake table more photogenic.
The ceremony was 45 minutes late- in part because the bride decided that she really needed a nap and no one woke her up. Also someone hadn’t turned up and so they had sent someone else off to go get them- it wasn’t the bride or the groom or the officiate, or any of the parents and I can’t think of anyone important enough to ask the people who were now sitting in the field in the sun to wait even longer. But they did.
The Best Man ended up doing all the ushering, which means he escorted a grandmother down the isle, then ran back up it to get the other one, and then sprinted back up for the brides mother before standing next to the groom.
The bride looked like she was going to be sick as she stood in front of the Bishop. It might have been all the hair spray or how tight her hair was pulled back. Donna said that she has never seen such an ugly hair style in her life.
Donna said this.
It was pulled into a half ponytail with three large curls pinned into a little pyramid on the top of her head. There were about four/five ringlets hanging from this on the side of her face, with the rest of her hair curled into ringlets in the back. It was not flattering to her or anyone else I know. I did wonder how much her maid of honor must have hated her to fix her hair like that.
Her maid of honor was wearing (country theme remember) a straw cowboy hat with a John Deer patch on the front.
The best part was when at the conclusion of th ceremony, some guy called out for "everybody grab your chair!" and the site of a little bent over woman who looked like she was pushing 80 folding up the chair and trecking up the hill with it. that and the site of the guy holding the broken umbrella (the yellow fabric had peeled halfway off the frame).
I kind of took over from Donna in the photography dept. mostly because I am bossy and opinionated when it comes to photographs and she isn’t very assertive.
We were starting to lose wedding party member to the air conditioning so I started looking for corsages and boutonnières and announcing that those people had to start heading in the direction I was pointing. There was no “picture list” but Donna and I had written one out at the beginning so we had an idea of the shots we were going to set up, which helped, but it was still very confusing to keep all the ones we had taken vs. ones we hadn’t strait in our heads. I feel uncomfortable in those settings because I wasn’t the primary photographer but I was taking over and directing people, and over all feeling like I was overstepping my bounds. I do hope they like the pictures I took- I ended up not keeping any for myself because I don’t think I will be using this wedding on my site as an example of my work
I thought it was the most horrifying wedding I’ve ever been too but they seemed to like/enjoy it and every one said “I do” so I guess that is what matters in the end.