Getting The Picture

"Well, I just think it should be back a bit."

"Mom, please let the hairdresser do her job. She knows best."

"I know. It's just that I think it should it go back a little."

"Mom, please! You're making me really stressed out. Please don't say another word, and let the hairdresser do her job!"

(Dead silence in the room. Now, count to 10.)

"Fine. It's just that I thought it should go back a little."

These are the things I witness weekly. No catastrophes, no disasters, just little glimpses into family life, 2007. Without a doubt, the question I'm asked most often is, "What's the worst thing that ever happened at a wedding?" It's also the one that always makes me laugh, because it precludes the obvious converse, that is, what's the best thing that's ever happened at a wedding? In all these years, no one ever has asked me that one, despite the fact that, last I checked, and with the possible exception of a handful of dour church ladies I've come across, weddings are tremendously happy events. But let's face it: We watch NASCAR for the crashes, despite our protestations to the contrary, and we follow celebrity romances so that we can get to the celebrity breakups.

And, of course, it would be overly simplistic to single out mothers and daughters as the source of all wedding drama, my favorite fake Freud quotation notwithstanding: "If it's not one thing, it's your mother." More often than not, the drama that we all expect to see played out at weddings is just a byproduct of the bridal-industrial complex, a perfectly evocative moniker bequeathed to me by a bride many years ago.

Weddings long ago migrated from traditional daytime affairs -- where the men looked dashing in their morning coats, the women had dresses with (gasp!) straps, and the nonstop giggling of flower girls could be heard wafting though the air -- into lavish evening extravaganzas, where children are not even invited. They've gone from the simplicity (and, to be fair, dullness) of the "chicken or the beef?" into menus that boast medallions of veal with a port peppercorn reduction. Today's weddings have price tags the size of a small mortgage (something for which I clearly share responsibility), time schedules that would make a railroad proud, golf outings, spa retreats and 19-seat minibuses taking bridal parties on magical mystery tours around Washington. Things have gotten so bloated that I was actually taken aback when a bride once said to me, "I'm so excited to be marrying Derek today."

Between the countless reality shows with names such as "The Real Wedding Crashers" and "Bridezillas," (Episode 10: When Kristina's sisters show up late for a nail appointment, the bride is furious!), it's no wonder people focus on the negative -- or bizarre, or just irritating -- aspects of weddings. The myriad wedding magazines on the newsstands, and the thousands of wedding blogs, don't help much. Consider this easy-to-follow advice from aboutWeddings.com: "Transition of color in the wedding is 'hot.' The color and theme of a wedding is first seen with the save-the-date card. At the ceremony, the colors are different than what was seen in the save-the-date card/invitation. At the cocktail reception, the colors are different from the ceremony. At the dinner reception, the colors are a combination of all colors previously seen. More than just two colors and no matchy-matchy!"

See? Simple.

Luckily, that kind of silliness isn't ever enough to trump the genuine moments of love and the celebrations of great happiness I'm often privileged to witness: I cried like a baby when a 5-year-old flower girl, blinded by the brain tumor growing inside her head, was led down the aisle by the little ring bearer at St. Aloysius years ago. But I must admit that the moment is annoyingly linked in my memory with the posting, around that same time, on theknot.com, a wedding message board ("Driving Brides Crazy Since 1996!"), by a bride who sought advice on what to do about one of her bridesmaids who, as a result of a worsening muscular disease, was now in a wheelchair, something that would potentially ruin her wedding photos.

(The Knot can be a great source of amusement. My sister, Jennifer, a "Knottie" herself, once related to me an e-mail exchange she had with a woman who had been told, as a Jew, not to use Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," because the composer had famously converted from Judaism. She had instead settled on Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." When Jennifer, with tongue in cheek, suggested that perhaps -- just perhaps -- that one wasn't exactly kosher either, the woman responded, "Why? It's about Jesu, not Jesus!")

At first I was afraid I was petrified/

Kept thinkin' I could never live without

you by my side.

As I sat across from Joel on that June night, I realized the song I had come to hate so much, the song that, perhaps more than any other, constantly reminds me that I have become a wedding photographer, shooting the same thing week in and week out, was now racing through my groggy brain. This time, though, it was reminding me of why I am a wedding photographer. My years of downplaying what I did for a living seemed silly as I sat on Joel's sofa. How bad could it be to be around people who are desperately in love, all the while surrounded by friends and family who love them desperately. Yeah, big deal, they all go crazy when "I Will Survive" or "YMCA" starts playing, but they haven't heard those songs thousands of times; I have. And when I think that I could be tallying billable hours, or working in a cubicle in E Ring, or selling widgets, I think my life is pretty darn okay.

Just the other day, I received an e-mail from a photographer looking for an internship. His short note almost brought me to tears: "I come from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and my life has put me though many challenges. I am saying this because I have had the chance to see the worst in humans and was lucky enough to survive it. Since then, I have made it my goal to help people record their happiest moments, because those moments are rare and precious, and one never has too many of them."

I kept Joel company for hours, long into the next morning, information coming in very slowly, and me, still in my sweaty wedding clothes, nodding off occasionally. Around 4:30 a.m., the phone rang, and I could hear the voice through the receiver telling my neighbor and friend that the woman he had been married to for 55 years didn't make it.

I felt so out of place, so not the person who should have been there at that terrible moment. But looking back, two years later, it almost seems as if Eileen was just being her usual giving self, not just allowing me to see how much she was adored, but allowing me to see marriage in its barest and most naked form. For nine hours that day -- nine years, really -- I had watched a marriage begin, and, now, for nine hours, I would watch one end. I wanted to turn away as Joel shook uncontrollably. I tried so hard to soothe him, but I knew there was nothing I could really say. Though I was in the presence of profound loss, all I could feel was love. This wasn't about linens and party favors, or caviar stations and big bands. There were no toasts and no blessings, no Bible readings, no clanging gongs or blaring trumpets. At long last, I was seeing the embodiment of marriage itself, the very reason man and woman have been wed from the beginning of time. True love.

Something else floated through my brain, this time decidedly more literary than Gloria Gaynor. In my days as an English major, some 20 years ago, the book that had the most profound effect on me was Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, a tattered paperback edition of which is never far from my grasp. Now I could hear my favorite line, the book's second sentence, coming through: "Each of us is all the sums he has not counted. Subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas."

It was 8 a.m. when the little cellphone in my pocket began to vibrate. My wife was calling, and I told her the news. I gave Joel a hug, grabbed my jacket and my cameras, and walked across the street and into my house, where, unable to sleep, I went downstairs and began to download, with newfound respect, memory cards from the previous night's wedding.

Matt Mendelsohn is a photographer based in Arlington. He can be reached at matt@mattmendelsohn.com.