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These are Memories Captured in Time, People!

Pop some popcorn and settle in folks. This is a long one.

Last Wednesday, Taerna and I were discussing wedding shit over program folding and I asked her who would be taking pictures at her brother and sister-in-law's wedding. Through sheer coincidence, their dental hygienist's husband had done photography back in the day and had given them a great price on taking a few shots during the ceremony. Only that left the pre-ceremony, post-ceremony and reception up in the air. Due to my recent oh so successful photo shoot with Eli, I was feeling overly confident about my photographic skills and offered to shoot as much or as little of the day as the happy couple would like. They gladly accepted, and the plan was set for me to show up at 4:00 pm on Saturday and capture all of the moments of the day.

After much coordination with my dad and Paco, I had a camera and plenty of storage space to take about 600 pictures. I had multiple lenses and a myriad of pre-set modes to capture images in all types of light and whatnot. I messed around with my dad's camera for about 15 minutes Saturday morning, but then got sick of taking pictures of inanimate objects and stopped. In retrospect, that was a bad move.

My parents and I were discussing lunch options when my very pregnant friend, Mo, called. She is due in about a week, and she had a craving for shopping for normal-sized clothing. Never one to turn down a friend or a shopping trip, I quickly shoved all of the camera stuff in a bag, showered, put on wedding appropriate clothing and comfortable shoes and headed to the mall. After buying way too many things, I still had an hour to kill and decided a pedicure was in the cards. Mo decided to go with me, but the place we planned to go to was all booked up so we ended up at one of those shops with really bad nail art photos on the walls and the smell of a recently microwaved Vietnamese delicacy. Big mistake #2 of the day.

During Mo's pedicure, the lady snipped her third toe. And it started bleeding. And bleeding. And bleeding. Being nine months pregnant and perched in a chair above a bubbling pool of water, Mo was in no position to reach down and apply the appropriate amount of pressure to stop the bleeding. After putting a variety of ointments and oils and cotton balls on Mo's toe, the woman working on my feet said something to Mo's toe snipper in Vietnamese, and Mo's toe snipper scurried off. She came back holding a cigarette which she proceeded to light up and hand to Mo. Just kidding. She tore the paper off the end of the cigarette and started packing the tobacco around Mo's snipped toe. We looked on in horror. After a few minutes the bleeding stopped. My toe lady informed us that it was a trick she picked up in Vietnam where they had no medicine. You learn something new everyday. Our lesson learned was never to go back there again.

After my "pampering" I drove like a bat out of hell to the church where the bride and bridesmaids were getting ready. The toe snipping incident caused my toe lady to slow way down thus making me late. Fun. I got there just as Taerna was arriving and started snapping pictures and didn't stop until seven hours later. For the most part, I think I did a pretty good job, and I was quite pleased with some of the pictures I was able to take. It sure helps when you have great subjects with beautiful smiles. My lack of practice became evident when the glorious natural light of a beautiful summer afternoon faded into the dusk then darkness of a cool summer night. Oh, and my hands shake a lot when I don't eat enough or if my back gets outta whack and both those things hit at about 8:00 pm when the light was fading and a steady hand became important and well, lets just hope the happy couple don't really care so much if the limo ride and their entrance into the reception hall wasn't captured forever. I secretly want to blame the batteries I was using at the time because shortly after taking about 50 blurry shots, the batteries pooped out and the next set of pictures was just fine, but I'm sure trembling hands didn't much help the situation.

On Sunday morning, I woke up with a pounding headache because I was too lazy to eat when I got home on Saturday night and had only time to eat three bites of wedding cake and a single cashew nut at the wedding. I was also having my lovely gag reflex I get when I don't sleep right. I'm a real freak - if I wake up before I'm ready, don't sleep in the right position or don't eat right the night before, my body reacts by pretending like it is going to puke. Knowing that the only cure was more cowbell - I mean eating something and laying around, I chose not to go to church. In my defense, while taking pictures of the reception hall which was in a Catholic church, they were holding mass, and I hummed along with all of the songs I could hear. Anyhoo... Between gagging and trying to choke down a granola bar, I downloaded all 500 plus pictures off of the numerous cards (thanks Dad and Paco!) and started putting them into folders and deleting out the reeeeallly bad shots. I didn't get to finish right away due to a Sunday brunch with The Boy, his family and family friends followed by a lovely baby shower for Mo.

By the end of Mo's shower, the headache hadn't gone away nor had the churning stomach, so I called and sent my regrets to Jane as I didn't feel up to driving to Lawrence for Elliot's birthday party. I'm a bad pseudo-aunt. I went upstairs and tried to burn the pictures to a CD to deliver to Taerna this morning. The progress bar said 99% complete and then it froze. And it kicked out the CD and said "I'm a piece of crap and you can't have your disk - nanny nanny boo-booooo!" I tried again, and was again taunted with 99% complete and "Unh-uhhhhhhhhh!". After much cursing and yelling so loud I almost made a vein pop out of my head, I collapsed on my bed in defeat.

Today at lunch, Taerna and I were able to use a jump drive to get the pics off of my piece of shit computer.� I am posting a couple of my favorite shots of the day below.

This is Taerna, her new sister-in-law and her beautiful niece Schmeivie! That smile is to die for!

So technically, this picture would be a million times better if the bride's face weren't so bathed in light, but it is still one of my favorite shots. Taerna's mom did those flowers and she'll be my florist in November. I'm such a lucky girl!!!

I snuck this picture of the happy couple while the "real" photographer was fussing about positioning and who was in what shot and whatnot. They are such a beautiful couple, and I hope life brings them all of the happiness in the world.

1:52 p.m. - August 02, 2004

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