....so im at a wedding recently, and the bride told me multiple times in advance that she wanted to get formals over fast as she wanted to get to the cocktail hour. We were at this wedding factory in New jersey which was located in a corporate park, so you KNEW right off you were in for a special treat. Nothing says 'matrimony' more than a facility next to faceless commercial buildings and chain hotels.
So we're not at the place 2 minutes and the staff start asking where we wanna shoot. I thought they were being helpful at first, but it suddenly became pushy. We had about 45 minutes to shoot but they were still breathing down our backs. That starts the night off REALLY wrong - wedding venue people ---give the photogs a CHANCE to scope out the venue if they haven't been there, for fucks sake.
Anyway, I took the dullest, most inspiration-sucking photos ever against some fucking drapes, and grabbed a few outside on some cheesy-ass Grande balcony. Completely uninspiring. I said, right on time when she wanted to finish I might add, "OK - we're all done." and she thanked me and said, "GREAT, now I can go to the cocktail hour..." A groomsman then comments and hits it on the head and says to the bride right in front of me, "I can tell how "important" the photos are to you! hahahahaha!" Wow---very funny. Laugh riot.
the night just keeps getting better.
Afterwards - the guy who was pushing me to choose a locale came up to me and said - "Well that was easy!!"
I said, "it WAS?"
He says, "Well nothing else is happening tonight---no formalities. She really wanted those shots done fast, and told me to tell when when it was a quarter after, since she was going to stop whatever you were doing and go to the cocktail hour."
"She WAS?" I said.
"Oh yeah I guess so, " he continued, "...she wasn't even interested in hiring a photographer..but her mother made her."
great---I felt SO glad to be there, and really gave it my all the rest of the night. I mean seriously? Talk about just working for a paycheck. Look, I know full well not every wedding is magazine worthy and people place different levels of importance on different things, but to find out she really didn't even WANT you there just fucking sucks. And so to see the huge amount of guests (200+) the quality and quantity of the food (lobster, crab legs, sushi bar and oysters at cocktail hour...) and know you were of little importance is just depressing. I just kinda tuned out, hit the camera button mindlessly and waited for the shit to end to get the fuck out of there.
A shitty start to fucking 2011...
