My hardest wedding-planning decision

When I got engaged, hardly anyone asked, "When's your date?" like they do most girls. Instead, my friends and family, aware of my inherited interest in photography, asked me, "Who will be your photographer?"

For the first half of our engagement, I couldn't answer them.

Here's my confession, and the reason I'm writing on this particular subject with very little time left before the wedding: For the first half of our engagement, I couldn't even envision our wedding. I'd been independent for so long, and making a concerted effort not to hope for marriage with every boyfriend that came along (lest I be disappointed), that now it was real and I couldn't picture it.

Oh sure, I could picture it in the abstract; I'd been secretly dreaming about it for years. I could imagine dancing with my husband, imagine walking down the aisle, seeing the smiling faces of my family and friends. But it was hazy; blurry; unreal. I couldn't choose a person whose eyes I wanted to see my wedding through, because I couldn't see it myself. Finally, I stepped back and decided to think about what my wedding really meant to me, and then the decision was easy.

I knew that the emphasis at our wedding will be on the interactions of our families and friends, and our happiness that we have them with us that day. I knew that I did not want our wedding to be about trends, or about details or little things you can make with a coffee stirrer, but about us, and about our love. I knew that our photographer had to be someone who understood that this day was the realization of a dream, as weddings always are.

I knew that I wanted our wedding day to be captured emotionally; I knew that I wanted organic, natural moments to come through. I knew that the images had to be good enough for me to say, "Oh, how sweet!" instead of "Nice lighting..."

 

...although light is nice, too.



I knew that I wanted to look at the images and hear the voices of those who were at the wedding.



I knew that I wanted to look at these pictures one day with my kids and be transported back to that day so many years ago; the fear, the anxiety, the joy. I wanted these pictures to help me remember love.

 




There is no checklist in the world that can illuminate the importance of these things. Technical competence and trendy processing are no substitute for real, true, captured emotion, which never goes out of style.

David Wittig was someone I'd seen in a forum years ago, well before I met Mr. Oyster. He rescued a thread that had become particularly contentious, and earned my respect in doing so. His blog has been in my RSS ever since. 

When I looked at his work again in the context of being engaged, the choice was easy. The things I originally liked about their work were the same things I wanted in my own wedding photographer. He and his wife Nancy are photographic storytellers like no one else.

I spoke to Nancy over the phone, and she said to me, "Weddings are an opportunity for us to make art." It is always a treat to encounter someone so passionate about their work, and I feel very lucky in getting a chance to work closely with people I admire, though the decision about photography was less about the images and more about the choice itself.

For some, wedding photography isn't much of a priority. For me, it is the symbol of the timelessness of weddings; of the fleeting nature of the moments, the happy recollections of those who are with us and those who are not. A photograph is a memory made tangible. Choosing a photographer is what began to make our wedding real to me.

My time as an engaged woman is coming to an end, and as the little details threaten to overshadow all meaning and rational thought, I try never to forget what I learned in this process.

I believe that the act of planning of wedding and the preparation for marriage are inextricably linked. I firmly believe that brides/grooms who are hopelessly indecisive about the cake, or the flowers, or about the dress, are really saying, "What is it I want? What does this symbolize? What do I want to remember, what do I want to present to the world?"

My wish for those in the midst of making thousands of little choices is that you embrace the indecision, and that you use it to help discover who you and your fiance are and what your wedding means to you. A decision made from this place is seldom regretted.

*All images in this post by our wedding photographers, David Wittig Photography. The bridal portraits, described in a previous post, were by someone else.