Pictures

Photography may not seem like the most urgent matter at this stage, but I reckon it has the potential to consume wads of time. So we resolved to start the consumption early. Photography is a detail inviting ruinous micromanagement---we all now have nice cameras and take many many pictures. Some of them are pretty nice. One might thus easily presume that a professional can be given good advice on how to do their job. But I know that's wrong. I'm trying to back away from that illusion, and take a more reasonable approach.

Foremost, we want a photographer that knows what to do. At the bridal expo we met lots of photographers who told us they focus on giving clients exactly what they want. I don't tell my clients that what I want is to give them exactly the summary judgement motion they want. What I want is for the photographer's to take good pictures (and to take the necessary battery of family shots).

Luckily my fiancee and I have similar ideas about what we want in terms of style -- when we find it, we plan to let the photographer do her thing unmolested by hacks' advice. As for that style, we are taken with the current fashion of "journalistic" slash "documentary" wedding shots. These tags imply that the pictures capture, with the unbiased and searching eye of the responsible professional journalist, the unvarnished sentiment of moments, in lieu of some staged presentation. Obviously, the pictures only capture the look of being unvarnished. Substance as style is the modern cry for authenticity in a mostly fabricated world, or something. I feel like we may be coming in mid-fad into a hackneyed academic trope, but we like how it looks. And it wouldn't be the first time.

Letting a photographer loose requires that she is good, at technique and in compositions. I.e., we don't want numerous close ups of wine glasses and shoes. But while we prefer an artist with a point of view, so to speak, we don't want an angry auteur making giving every photo the unnegotiably raw power of the subject. People must look good in the pictures. We've begun searching for this reasonable auteur in some instructive conversations discussed in forthcoming entries.

Ghost at the Expo

Today we visited the regional "bridal showcase" in Fairfax, VA. We left feeling queasy, due both to our stomachs full of cake samples, and the disturbing distension of our wedding budget.

I entered this planning process confident that we were more than a match for sentimental shills and crass tactics of wedding merchants. The showcase was the first real skirmish. The industry drew first blood when I was turned away at the door. The guy taking tickets informed us that men must enter through another entrance, which was in fact really an exit. When I circled around from the men's entrance, I saw that the purpose of the segregation was to load the women with fliers and to sign them up for volleys of spam without any male interference.

I regret I left the camera at home. One will have to imagine the arena floor and outer passageways of the Patriot Center jammed with brides, mothers and stone-faced men hauling bags full of menus and glossy pamphlets. The harpists banged out Bach, Wild Cherry's one good song blared from the live band on display. I was disappointed in the lack of blingism on display. There was only one ice-sculpture display, and only one motorized chocolate fondue vendor.

I understand completely that in a traditional world that I don't recognize on sight only women are interested in and make decisions on wedding matters. So, I came prepared to be invisible to vendors. Nonetheless I made a large number of photographers, caterers and cake makers talk to me. I assailed photographers with obviously ignorant technical questions about their equipment. I demanded to know if I could get a red velvet cake. I got carried away and asked if I could get an English style, i.e., Trinidadian black cake. The answer was a polite kind of "hell no" -- some nonesense about the bakery's unique unadulterable recipe.

Primarily, we learned a lot about photography. We saw countless massive albums and video slide shows. Gigantic glossy soft focus pictures of brides flanked by the columns of famous plantations throughout the state hung over displays. The chief lesson there was that good photography costs a lot. And, that the worst frequently costs the most. The same goes for invitations; and many other essential elements. Thus, while we did not wrap up any new elements of the plan, we are better trained to go toe to toe with the industry in the coming months.

Two Houses

Last week we saw our second candidate site, Hendry House, in Arlington, VA, where we live. This is a historic mansion in a city park. The house's main level has three cozy rooms with sparking wood floors, flowing neatly into another. Numerous large windows open to covered patios on three sides. We visited on a gray winter day, but could easily imagine the wooded grounds in fall colors for our planned October date.

Wedding site and cozy home are crossed purposes. But this house's close quarters generate a certain understated elegance and bit of spacial intrigue that make a virtue of its limitations. Nonetheless, its a small site. The house only holds 65 people inside seated at tables. A couple dozen more could be put out on the patios. Although we were told this is typical, it would be less than ideal. Squeezing people in and managing traffic could prove a challenge.

Hendry House is set in Fort C.F. Smith Park, historical park preserving a civil war Union army fortification, marking a crucial line of defense against the Confederacy. The house was built in the early 20th century. A restored Union fort in Virginia, where seemingly every other road and Junior High is named for Robert E. Lee and where the stars and bars fly from the strangest places, is an an odd and refreshing phenomenon. Arlington, in modern terms, still marks the the farthest reach of the U.S. counterrevolution.

The first site we visited, Decatur House, had the bones of a proper wedding site. It has a large rectangular room with an entry atrium side by side with a large stone courtyard. Sitting on the verge of Lafayette park, bookend to a row of elegant Federal row houses and a shout from the White House, it has a diffuse air of power and history. As is clear from its second billing in this report, it nonetheless failed to make the necessary impression. The mealy carpet and tourist trampled fittings reduce its air to airs. The courtyard is at the bottom of a canyon of buildings whose grim backsides are not what they might seem from their facades on Lafayette park. The price added a bad aftertaste. This has become a recurring theme with our other site visits, and a note Hendry House continually strikes in dominant contrast.

Wedding planning

This is the inaugural wedding-planning entry, and the first post of this collection. There will be other topics, and a different organization to house them, but I think this is a good place to start.

I must state at the outset that we are planning a snob's wedding. This is not a point of pride in itself, and it means that we have a tough road ahead of us. We proceed chastened by the shame of this bad behavior and its coming punishments. Specifically, this snob's path means that we will often decide to do things differently, sometimes in a way less costly than usual, sometimes far more. But in either case it will require the exertion of making choices where choices could be avoided.

Like more and more of our peers, we are paying for it all. We have no complaints about our means, but each dime we spend will be one we saved ourselves. And so we face a strong case for frugality. But this is consistent with our approach, because we know the binds of economy can liberate. They force care in choices and truth to self. We learned this lesson well during our five years in New York. After coming back to NoVa, its one thing about NYC I vowed not to forget on purpose.

Some choices will be driven by arbitrary requirements, some obvious, some ridiculous. There will be, clearly, no SUV limo. There are obvious alternatives to pulling up in a stretched, frosted quasi military vehicle, but not many fitting my narrow ideals (If anyone has a '65 Aston Martin DB6 or similar to let for an afternoon super cheap please contact me directly.) Also, I refuse to be wed on a plantation or in a country-club. You Virginians may know why this is both objectionable and potentially hard to avoid. Of course there will be other rigid objections. Many will succumb to reality, but their survival here and there will supply gratifying triumphs.

None of this is to say that we forgot where we came from -- we are not seeking to rise above ourselves or others, but to be ourselves. This wedding-plan is about showing who we are, and what we mean to each other. Planning it will be a way of affirming our shared values, our love . . . and fighting it out about the types of chairs for the reception.

As you wedding veterans know, the first order of battle is finding a place. On learning that you are engaged, everyone wants to know if you have set a date. Of course there is no when without a where, unless you are planning to hijack a public park for the event. In the next and the first proper installment we set out to find a place.