They had asked for “nothing posed”, which is the sentence I most like to hear, and then spent the whole day proving they meant it. Amara got ready with four friends and her mother in a room too small for six people, and nobody once asked me where to stand.
It rained until half past one. The orchard ceremony had a contingency plan involving the barn, and at ten past one Joel looked at the sky, said “we’re outside”, and that was the end of the discussion.
The part I keep coming back to
Amara’s grandmother sat in the front row with her hands folded and did not stop laughing from the moment the doors opened. I photographed her eleven times and I would happily have spent the whole ceremony on that one seat.
It is the thing I say to every couple who is nervous about being photographed: I am not usually looking at you. You are busy. The people watching you are the ones with nothing to do but feel something.
We did not notice her all day, and got back four hundred pictures of our own wedding.
By nine the rain had gone completely and the whole party moved outside under one strand of festoon bulbs, which is why half this gallery is lit by about sixty watts. Those are always the best frames of the night and they are never in the plan.
