Sometimes you meet people who just treat you like you are the center of their universe. It was said that Bill Clinton was this way. When meeting him, people would say that it was like there was no one else in the room and that you were the most important person in the world for that brief meeting. This was how both Matt and Rhonda were. On first meeting them they just seemed to be quite possibly the friendliest people we had ever met and seemed to care so much about us, our kids, and the mundane that normally most people don’t really care about. I really wanted to shoot their wedding to see what kinds of people they had as friends.
But I had another bride who had contacted me first about a wedding in Houston on the very same day as Matt and Rhonda’s wedding. She hadn’t met with us yet and only seemed kind of serious about hiring us, but I honor whoever contacts us first. So I sent out a kind of odd feeler to see how serious the Houston bride was. I sent her a very funny email that basically said that I was going to set up a cage fight between her and Rhonda to decide who could hire me for her wedding and that she had to let me know if she was really interested in hiring us. I never heard from her again. I didn’t think it was that weird, but I’ve been told by some of my photographer friends that I may have pushed it a little too far. I guess I won’t be able to set up any bride cage fights again. Oddly enough when I shot Matt and Rhonda’s engagement pictures a couple of months back, I told them what I had sent to the other bride and Rhonda looked at me, flexed her arms and said, ‘I could have taken her.’ I supppose I chose the right couple after all.
Their wedding was like a movie. You know the gushing chick flick where everyone is hugging and kissing and is absolutely amazing and wonderful and every shot you take is fabulous. It rained during the ceremony, but it didn’t dampen the spirits of either the bride or the groom and they just smiled at each other, at the guests under umbrellas, at me and Christina. The pictures don’t show a hint of the rain that was falling either. If people weren’t holding umbrellas you would have never known.
The bride and groom ate by themselves up stairs at Green Pastures and insisted that Christina and I join them for the fabulous feast. We obliged and graciously thanked them.
They danced and danced and hugged people right and left and eventually hopped in a limo off to their honeymoon.
