This year I seem to be doing more traveling than ever shooting weddings. I have to admit that I really have enjoyed these shoots quite a bit. Not because I am traveling to exotic locals. I am not. In fact, I have travelled to many small towns and even some places that I have never heard of.
What I have grown to love about these traveling weddings is the experience of being totally immersed in the events of the whole wedding weekend. To meet and interview family and friends on the rehearsal day and the wedding day. To feel the excitement when people come together for the first time with people they haven’t seen for years. I see how they interact during the rehearsal and the dinner that usually follows. I see the big moments and the quiet intimate ones too. The event is actually much bigger than just a one hour ceremony.
Not too long ago, I saw the film Rachel Getting Married. That film reminded me that, not only are families wonderfully complex, but it also reminded me of how all of the amazing and moving and funny and strange family stories seem to bubble to the surface during the wedding weekend. It is an incredible thing to witness as an outsider.
I attended a wedding last fall in Staunton, Virginia, a beautiful town in the Shenandoah Valley. I was invited to document the wedding weekend of Jamie and Greg. They are a fascinating couple with a great story. However, it was all of the stories told by the family and friends that really made me appreciate the fact that the wedding was not really about just this couple. It was also about their families and friends. It was about the past and present and, most certainly, about the hope for the future. But, somehow, this wedding was also about me. Somehow, watching a wedding weekend unfold like this affected how I look at the story of my own life. It’s funny how that happens.
I have had several wedding weekends I have attended this year and several more to come. It is really amazing how each one is so different and each shows me a little bit about the world that I didn’t know existed just a week before.
I guess it is always possible to get tired of traveling, to forget about the importance of these events. I really hope that never happens. Or if it does, I hope that I have someone who cares about me enough to give me a kick in the ass to remind me of how lucky I am.
Take care. Gotta pack.