A report from the front !!!! I don’t do ‘social photography’ either, does the following tail, give any idea why??? 🙂
-) Let me tell you about my last experience, for an Art Ed friend, who wanted reportage-style for her wedding to a publisher at a certain large East Midlands company.
– 0800 start: shots of the groom drinking a quarter-pint glass of brandy, while he gets dressed. Pissed witless by 0830
– 1100 : wedding itself passes off without incident at registry office, chaos outside afterwards as bride does her pieces at drunk new husband. Puzzled looks from many who know her as a serious drinker who has twice busted her leg when falling down.
– 1200 : groom adjourns to mens’ room at reception hotel, where he munches a piece of hash big enough to fell a horse, and does a couple of lines of coke, all off camera. I only hear about it when…
– 1300 : luncheon speeches. Mayhem and consternation among bride’s family as swaying, ashen groom begins ‘I would like to shayy that I have never done so much drugs…’. He goes on to explain how he and the bride hardly know each other but, on the positive side, may grow to love each other in time. Bride, who’s now arseholed herself, bursts into tears, father tries
to calm her down. Somehow order is restored, telegrams read, and gifts opened. One turns out to be a full bondage set, chains, handcuffs, bullwhip, studded leather mask, basque, belts, restraints. (Aunties now on verge of coronary arrest. They don’t know that the bride has previous, having cuffed the groom to a bed and gone out shopping, met a friend and
forgotten about him for 7hrs). Groom says something to Bride, who storms out and is not seen again. Guests adjourn to bar, commence therapeutic drinking.
– 1800: journo guest eats goldfish from the hotel’s fishtank, for a bet
– 2300: decorated-to-the-point-of-vandalism groom’s car placed on bricks, to prevent him trying to drive. Which is unlikely on all fours.
– 2330: I flee the scene, terrified of a predatory woman guest who seems to have decided I’m ‘giving her a lift home’ in the Biblical sense.
Three weeks later, just after I delivered a bunch of prints and the bill, the groom left his wife for another man.
I never did get paid. She’d suffered enough without me hassling her for money for a reminder of her spectacularly disastrous, humiliating, life-ruining special day.
(Still bitter & twisted after doing one “journo” wedding)
I DON’T do weddings 🙂
