Wedding Blog

Have I ever told you how we found our photographer? No? Well, here goes…

Not long after we were engaged, I found an old box of photos from earlier times in my life (which is a euphemism for my first wedding/ marriage, because I’ve decided it’s time to stop talking about it so much now that the chapter is finally, blessedly, peacefully closed). My fiance found me sitting on the floor in tears while I struggled to deal with the rush of memories taking over my heart.

Until that point, I didn’t care much about photography, figuring the best experiences were meant to be enjoyed, not captured, and the best memories would always be in my head. But then I found a picture of my now-deceased grandparents dancing. And I remembered the long-forgotten drama that raged around our choice of centerpieces; saw myself in all of my youthful naiveté; found my favorite picture of my favorite kid. I realized that someday I’d want to share my story – the whole story – with my children, and I’d want to show them these pictures as evidence of the life I lived before I met their father.

With newfound appreciation for the merits of photography, I set about finding a photographer stumbled upon a listing for a photographer on Craigslist. She was looking to expand her portfolio and so offered reduced sitting fees (of course that caught my attention, don’t you know me well enough to know that yet?). I was looking for an inexpensive way to remedy the fact that my beloved and I had perhaps one good (non-goofy) picture of us both.

When I jumped over to her website, I was stunned.

The colors! The richness! The expressions! At the time her portfolio consisted primarily of children’s pictures, but I figured if she could coax such stunning photos out of kids too young to know how to pose, we had a chance. I’m a notorious eye-closer (you should see my prom pictures!) and we’re not really a lovey dovey couple.

You can see the results here.

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I’d also like to mention that we weren’t getting along particularly well that day. We were running late, I couldn’t find a thing to wear, and, well, we just didn’t get along very often at the time. We’d never spent time in front of a photographer and only the promise of a cold beer got us through the discomfort. I wondered – even during the shoot – about the point of engagement pictures, the vanity inherent in hiring someone to take photos of you. Would we even use them?

Then I got the proofs. We looked happy. And silly. And, well, GOOD.

There were times during our engagement that I couldn’t imagine being happy and silly and fun again, difficult times when I wasn’t sure we were on the right road. That picture sat on my desk, and I’d look at it and think, “Yea, that’s right! I do look at him like that; we are that good together sometimes.”

And when things were good, and I was dreaming of babies and vacations and days spent doing anything other than painting, I’d smile at the thought that our grandchildren would find these pictures and think, “They were so young! Don’t I look just like her/ him? Weird!”

And, of course, you all know by now that I used the heck out of our e-pics as the easiest STDs ever.

We can all take snapshots, but it takes skill and talent and practice to capture someone’s essence in a one-second glimpse into their lives. Angela captured ours so effectively there was never any question we’d hire her to shoot our wedding.

All photography by Angela Herzog of Angela Herzog Photography (www.angelaherzogphotography.com) unless otherwise noted. In later posts, asterisks (*) indicate that post-processing was done by me, and thus, should not be held against her. Why? Because I opted to save her the post-processing effort on pictures I’d need only for this blog.