Never wanted a wedding

I've just spent the last 9 hours looking at hundreds of wedding pictures for an upcoming work project and I just have to say: I'm so glad I never had a real wedding! It all looks so exhausting ... trying to get everything just perfect ... and all that money ... I have a work friend who plans events and the word from her is that the minimum budget for a wedding is $50 grand. That's her MINIMUM, to even consider taking on the project. Most of her clients have a budget of $75K and up. For a few hours of wedding events! Who are these people?

The photos, I will say, are almost universally gorgeous. Maybe it would be worth the down payment on a house to have at least one or two photos of myself that don't make me look like a frumpy rumpled troll. Or maybe they just didn't submit the ones of unphotogenic brides.

A couple of photographers are really standing out in this group, too. I love seeing how each one has a distinct eye – not just their style or technical acumen, but their instinct for what makes a good photo. A couple really stand out as photojournalists – every image looks like it was shot for a newspaper. One fine art photographer (who also happens to be an acquaintance and occasional colleague of mine), with her stuff, almost every shot is like what you'd expect to see in an expensive coffee table book. Her sense of color, light and mood is spot-on in every single picture.

As the person who has to put it all together for print, it makes me very happy to have such an abundance of really good photographs, for a change. I found out in a meeting this afternoon that I'm going to have to scrap my last two weeks of work and start over with all new layouts for this section, but because the changes mean I finally have some decent material to work with, I'm actually pretty happy about it. Even though it also means I'm going to be working insane hours for the next couple of weeks to get everything done, and redone.

As for the idea of a wedding itself ... it's just never been my fantasy to have that one "very special day." I can't even begin to imagine voluntarily putting myself in the spotlight the way the folks in these photos are doing, even if it's only my good friends and family who are looking. That's why I eloped the first time I got married – so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone looking at me. The party we had a few weeks later was simple and fun and low-key and well under $50K. It helps with the budget when nobody expects to be served alcohol.

Anyway. I think sometimes about BEING married again, or more accurately, about being able to access certain financial benefits that are available only to officially married people – but having an actual wedding, I don't ever think about that. Except right now, looking at all these pictures.

Everybody looks so happy, and that's sweet to see. Even though you know it's still just one day out of a life that's full of all the usual stuff that everyone's life contains. I have a long history of finding myself in the middle of such events, where everyone is supposed to be having such a wonderful, magical time-out-of-mind – and checking in with myself emotionally only to find that I don't really feel much different than I usually do when nothing in particular is going on. I do know how it is to feel swept away by the kind of joy I think people want to feel at a wedding – but when it happens to me it's almost never because of any particular event, but more just as a natural condition of being .... waking up in the morning, or riding my bike. It's rare (though not unprecedented) that a long planned for spectacular event actually lives up to my expectations ....

But then, maybe that's why people have weddings in the first place. Life is so often disappointing. Maybe it's something we need, every once in awhile – to enter a situation where we're encouraged to go ahead and reach for the hope of feeling something more intensely joyous than the usual. I have to admit the people in the photos do look pretty happy.

On the other hand, maybe it's just the wine .... Plenty of wine flowing around here.

I definitely need to have a party pretty soon. Invite a few people over to cook, at the very least.

Sigh. Enough pondering and pontificating. Back to work.