The Experience: Wedding Family Portraits

Three days before our wedding, I sent out the following email:

Dear Wedding Party,

Here is some important info for making this THE BEST DAY EVER:

First, know where you are going. Here is the address to the wedding venue: 
6 Herndon Ave, Annapolis, MD 21403. 

Second, know who to call if you need help:

Courtney, the wedding coordinator, for wedding related events - 555-555-5555

Nancy, Anna's mom, for any other issues - 555-555-5555

Third, know where you need to be and when:

• Wedding party (bridesmaids and groomsmen) need to arrive at the venue at 4:15 so that you are ready for pictures at 4:30
• Family members need to arrive at the venue at 4:30 for pictures at 4:45
• Ushers - please arrive by 5:00 to make sure you are down with the seating plans and are ready to seat any early arriving guests by 5:15.
• Wedding party can wait in an upstairs room and take care of any last minute beauty needs from 5:30-6:00.

If you have any questions about who you are and when you are supposed to be somewhere, please let me know by the end of the day tomorrow. We cannot wait to see all of you!!!

Hugs,

Ben and Anna

I wasn't taking any chances on someone calling me on my wedding day, wondering what time they needed to be somewhere. That was the only day of my life that my phone has ever been separated from my person (let's talk about separation anxiety) and there would be nothing I could do to help if someone had tried to call me anyway. 

We opted to do all of our family portraits before our ceremony, which meant that if anyone was running late, there would be a delay and our ceremony might not start on time and probably be in the dark, since it was scheduled exactly for sunset. I should probably also note that all of the times I listed in that email were at least 15 minutes before I actually needed them to be there (and in my sister's, I made it a full hour, because we all know that she operates by a different clock than the rest of the world). It was important to my mom that we leave some time to get pictures of our families, and I didn't want to be missing my cocktail hour.

To your parents, your formal family pictures are probably the reason you hired a wedding photographer. These are the photos that live on in a frame on grandma's side table for years, a proud display of a beautiful family. And truth be told, it may be one of the only times in your adult life where your entire family is together for a picture and everyone looks their best (or tried to anyway). So maybe your parents aren't so crazy in wanting you set aside time on your wedding day to make these pictures happen. Here are some tips for making them run as smoothly as possible:

1. Timing // When you're planning your wedding timeline, it's a good idea to plan for family pictures to take place right before or right after the wedding ceremony. This is when most of the people who need to be IN the pictures are close by, and in a lot of cases, the ceremony setting provides a wonderful backdrop for the photos. If the bride and groom are open to seeing each other before the ceremony, taking pictures of families before the ceremony gives everyone more time at the cocktail hour to visit and party, however this is totally a personal preference. Otherwise, family pictures usually take place first thing after the ceremony, during the cocktail hour. Usually a half hour is enough time to capture all of the requested groups (yep, that means you - or your parents - get to pick who you want in your pictures), but if the groups are very large or there are more than ten groups to photograph, additional time should be allotted.

2. Choosing groups // At some point before you set up your timeline, it's a good idea to consult your immediate families to get a consensus on who needs to be in these formal photos. While you might not be too concerned with these photos, your mom or your groom's mom might want a say. But keep in mind, unless you want to be standing posed all night with a smile plastered on your face and your cheeks feeling the burn stronger by the second, the fewer the groups, the better. In most cases, there are probably only four or five essential groups per side of the family that need to be included. 

Bride's Parents

Bride's Siblings

Bride's Grandparents

Bride's Immediate Family + Grandparents

Groom's Parents

Groom's Siblings

Groom's Grandparents

Groom's Immediate Family + Grandparents

Of course, blended families can require an additional grouping or two or be more complicated (tell me about them…I know), and that is exactly the situation that may involve a little more time. In that case, it may also be beneficial to note who absolutely CANNOT be in a picture together to avoid any awkward or unpleasant situations. And, while it may be important to get a picture with just your sisters or a favorite aunt or family friend, those pictures can certainly be captured more candidly during the cocktail hour or reception - to give your smile a well-deserved break.

3. Rallying the troops // Aside from selecting the groups for photos, the biggest challenge is keeping everyone on deck which plays a major role in keeping the photos within the allotted amount of time. And when they go over the allotted amount of time, it can derail everything from the time the ceremony starts to how long we have for pictures of just the two of you. But it's so tempting for family members to go party when there's a cocktail hour happening…places to go and people to see. There are a few things we can do together to make this easier. First, let everyone who needs to be in these pictures know ahead of time when they will be taken, what time and where to meet. Assure them that they will have time to grab a cosmo or a scotch as soon as the photos are done. Second, knowing names makes it much easier to call groups, so providing the names of the people in the group with the list of groupings is super-de-dooper helpful. Third, I will try to make it as painless on everyone as possible by doing all of one side of the family in one fell swoop - so that when they are done, they can head over to the party. 

So there you have it…how to have quick, pain-free, and timely group portraits on your wedding day. Next week's tricky task simplified…planning your timeline.

PS. Yes, you may borrow my awesome email to send to your wedding party. Consider it a favor.

Illinois: The Farm

It has been four years since I last set foot on my family's farm. Our land, our Tara, our Downton Abbey.

Two weeks of every summer until high school my sister and I spent here learning to cook, bake, sew, and read to our heart's content. My grandma worked at the library in town and she always took us to check out books on the first day of our stay. We'd take trips to nearby places and parks that were full of history - the Indiana Dunes on the shores of Lake Michigan, Springfield, Illinois to see the home of Abraham Lincoln, and Hannibal, Missouri to Mark Twain's stomping ground. It was two weeks living a life of simplicity, one distant and removed from everything we knew at home.

This time, I returned to the farm to celebrate my grandpa's birthday. It took us an extra day to make it out there, our flight being cancelled for a snowstorm that dumped a few inches but was nothing to a place that regularly sees 20+ inches of snow at one time during a normal winter. Plowing snow keeps my uncle, who does a majority of the farm work now, busy during the "slow" season, when the ground is too hard to plow or plant and not much will grow.

In addition to photographing the celebration, I wanted to make some images of the farm. I do not know when life will lead me back to it, but it is a place that has left its mark on me, and certainly the lives of my mom and her brother and sister. There are parts of me that I know I owe to this place - my need to economize (that I fight against daily, because I am not by nature a practical person), my "protestant work ethic" that prevailed over my life until I left school, my need to make things with my own two hands, my love of the earth and protectiveness of it. I know that I need to preserve the farm in my memory as it is now, because farming is craft that, in a world of instant gratification and resistance to bone-tiring labor (of which I am most certainly a part of), becomes harder to pass along to the next generation.

My grandpa requested that I only take pictures of the pretty parts and leave out the junk - his words, not mine. Because I didn't see any junk. There's a saying, "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without," which very well sums up the philosophy of living on a farm. So yes, there are some worn out and used up parts of the landscape, but that's entirely a part of the beauty and the story. There is no place on a farm for anything impractical or too-pretty-to-use. It's going to end up muddy, dirty, rusty...because that's how you know it's doing it's job.

At one point in his life, before running the farm full time, my grandpa was a mechanic for GM, which means that between farming and being a mechanic, he can probably fix just about anything. And ever since, my family has been as loyal to a brand of cars like they were family too.

 

Inside one of the barns is a collection of equipment and machines - some of which cost more than a house. When I walked in, at first I felt very small. And then it hit me that relatively speaking, the costs of starting my own business have been minor compared to what it takes to run a farm. While the land might be passed down from generation to generation, the tools needed to make it successful are not.

Umm...this is not a macro (close up) shot. The tire treads are really this big.  

We joke about the frequency of talk about the weather in the midwest. But for my family, it's not just a polite topic of conversation, it is a crucial element of their day and livelihood. My grandpa and uncle rely heavily on their trusty rain gauge to know how to properly care for their precious crops.

All of these images were processed with the new VSCO Film 03. I love this new series of instant film emulation, and felt that it was perfectly suited to the nature of a farm - enhancing the coolness of the winter, the warmth of the sun, and the aged look of the rustic surroundings.

Winter in Paris and Rome

Six years ago, I was 19 years old, on my own in Italy, studying abroad, living a dream and, at the same time, the most homesick I've ever been in my life.

It was grey and cold, much like it is here on the East Coast, where, in every month but February, we like to say we love having four seasons. By February, we are all ready jump ship and move to SoCal, where, according to my dad, who has been trying to get me to move there since I was nine, it is 60 degrees and sunny all the time, no exceptions. Yeah, I'll take some of that, please. I've had it with my sweater collection for this year.

But back to being in Italy. I lived in a mountain town. It was picturesque and beautiful, the quaint, ancient city nestled on the side of a big hill...and cold, oh so cold. In January, everything had been new and the exhilaration of the adventure obscured the culture shock and longing for familiarity. But in February, everything was grey. Grey like my soul, as my sister and I would joke. The grey sky was accented by the grey stone buildings, and the grey cobblestone streets, and the grey trees, and the grey fog that descended on the mountain top until, maybe, the sun might burn through enough of it to lift the fog and turn it into grey clouds. But the sun could not burn through the fog of homesickness that surrounded me every moment of every day that February, as I walked among the antiquated Etruscan buildings, marveling at the fact that I was still a teenager a world apart from the security and comforts of my American life, making fabulous memories far away from those that I loved and missed in the deepest parts of my being.

The bright spot in my life that lonely February were the emails from my sister. Knowing how much I missed everyone back home, she took up a campaign to send me an email every day, detailing the humdrum and mundane events of her life with her signature humorous flair. I remember sitting in the library of the international school and laughing aloud at my computer screen after reading her emails, receiving sideways glances from other students nearby. Sometimes I would get a poem about high school trivialities, other times she sent pictures of the things I wasn't there to see (like her formal dance dress, and her cast covered in a rainbow of signatures after she broke her arm snowboarding with our favorite second family), and every message ended with a post script of song lyrics. That was always our thing, taking stupid lines from pop songs out of context by removing the melody and applying normal syntax (our favorite being "Play that funky music, white boy"), so usually by the time I made it through that line, I was bent over with laughter.

But my favorite email of them all was one that wasn't funny; it was heartfelt and comforting. I thought that I had saved it from the black hole of my college email account, but a search of my current inbox turns up nothing. I wish I remembered what the whole email said, but all I remember is the end:

"PS. 'Another winter day has come and gone away, in even Paris and Rome, and I want go home...''

The emotional response was immediate as I read the beautiful words. In one line, like a heartfelt poem, she summed up everything I was feeling - Paris and Rome the symbols of my grand adventure but not enough to stem the constant tug in my heart for the people and places that had always been home. Tears welled up in my eyes as I finished her email, believing that no one, ever, would be able to understand my mixed emotions like my sister.

Yesterday, she called to tell me how much she loved my latest project. Tomorrow is her birthday. Today, I am cursing the month of February for being so grey and boring and miserable. Once again, like that month six years ago, the shiny thrill of freedom has been dulled by the drudgery of fighting daily through the fear and loneliness that come when I'm out of my comfort zone. But as I was drinking my pick-me-up Joy tea this afternoon, wishing it was actually infused with its namesake emotion, staring out the window, willing the sun to make an appearance and bring back the warmth of spring with the promise of growth, the strains of Home came through the laptop speakers, like a message from the shuffle gods. Again, just like that winter day six years ago, tears welled up in my eyes, as I thought of my sister and how she knew exactly what to say in that moment, thousands of seconds and miles away, wrapping me in the comfortable hug of her words and a song, as if she was right beside me. I am home, embarking on this adventure with the people who mean the most to me. And all of a sudden, surrounded by gratefulness for the memory of a more lonesome winter than this and for a sister who knows how to brighten any day, February doesn't seem so bad.