Since I registered for this blog back in March, I would suppose that it's about high time that I actually posted something in it.

Honestly, I had all but forgotten about it until I was chatting with an old friend on the weekend and he mentioned that he has a blog and is more or less pretty good about keeping it current.

My idea of a blog is my once a year Christmas update letter!! In fact, I haven't even written in my diary in over a year!

So, since the freshest thing on my mind right now is the events of this past weekend, I might as well start there and see where this thing takes me...

This weekend, my mom's best friend Dorothy's son, Jason, got married, and it was a 3+ day affair for me since I was the un-official "official" photographer.

I took off from work early on Friday (if you can call squeaking out at 4:20pm EARLY), grabbed my camera gear and raced to the Whitby Harbour where the wedding rehearsal was taking place at 6pm. I had already been to the location the previous weekend to scout it out and that's when I noticed that the town of Whitby was also hosting "Harbour Days" the same weekend! Crap - I could now count on impossible parking, a lot of hoofing it with about a gazillion tons of camera equipment & props and all kinds of stray people milling in and out of my shots of the ceremony. FANTASTIC!

The rehearsal on friday night went well and we were able to run through the "service" twice in fairly quick time. Everybody seemed to know what was required of them. The minister, Dean, was very cool and also kept everyone on task. The families and wedding party went to the bride & groom's place for a bbq afterwards while I headed home to get my gear prepped. Since I use my camera all week at work and we had just had a home staging the previous week, my cards were all pretty much full and I didn't have all my batteries charged, so I had several hours of organization to take care of before falling into bed to try to get a good night's sleep.

Saturday morning dawned clear and warm - it was going to be a hot, hot day with no chance of rain. Perfect day for a wedding!

Lori, my dearest friend in the world, and assistant for the day, arrived at 9am. She and I loaded up the Cirrus and headed out for a good feed before meeting the girls at the salon for 11.

We had a great breakfast at Momma's restaurant and had enough time to run into Walmart to get me some new sunglasses. We arrived at the salon just after 11 and the girls were just getting started.

The salon, Aqualibrium, was nothing short of amazing. We took lots of photos there of the girls including a group shot with their stylists at the end. A lovely young lady there with a very pretty smile kept me supplied with refreshing cucumber water while we were there taking photos. I'm sure all that water went a long way towards helping me stay on my feet as long as I did.

With only 2 hours to go before the wedding - and 3 hours after arriving at the salon - we were able to get away to stop at the house and dump the nearly 300 photos we had taken of the girls getting beautified off of the flash cards and wolf down a peanut butter sandwich each before breaking all kinds of laws getting to the hotel in time for the next photo session of the girls getting dressed. We arrived 1 minute late but easily could have been 15 more without a problem since at the point of our arrival, the bride to be was just getting in the tub for a quick bath. We set up a few natural light photos with the bridesmaids by the window while we waited then took an assortment of candids while Cindy got into her gown.

The gown was stunning - a strapless bodice with an A line skirt and small train. Off white with beautiful beaded appliques. Got some great shots of Cindy with her mom and also with her step-dad then for Lori and I it was off to the park to get set up for the arrival of the limo with the girls for the service. Whew!! Not even to the wedding ceremony yet and the poor Cirrus is panting in the heat with all these short, quick (ok- insane quick) trips between locations.

We were able to get *THE* best parking spot imaginable (not sure how that came to be, but throwing up a general "Thanks!" to the powers that be) and were in position waiting when the limo arrived.

The gazebo looked amazing. The guests were already seated. The groomsmen and groom were in position waiting and there was just enough of a breeze to keep people from spontaniously combusting.

In an almost unheard of occurance, the bride was actually EARLY for the wedding. The stretch SUV limo backed into position about 10 minutes before the service was scheduled to start so again, I did a lot of hurry up and wait. I was at the bottom of the footpath leading up to the gazebo waiting to take pictures of the girls as they exited the limo. Lori was at the top of the path with a second camera to catch more shots of them there and allow me time to get from the bottom of the path to the other side of the gazebo before the bride and her father. Hello? Can you say "Clone me PLEASE?!" Holy crap.

I did make it to my preplanned position in time to get the million dollar shots so it's all good in the end. The service was lovely, everyone looked fantastic. No one got crapped on by a seagull (well, with the exception of Antonio's car, I'm told and sorry to hear).

We set the wedding party up for some photos with the lake and a passing tall ship in the background then the bridal party headed off through the park towards the reception hall a short walk away while Lori and I scambled to pack up the camera gear, tossed it in the back of the car and tried to beat them over there (there is such a theme developing here, isn't there?). Halfway to the hall, Lori spots the wedding party at a kids playground on see-saws and slides and of course we simply MUST have photos of this (Hey, they're the ones that wanted candid, natural, NOT POSED photos!) so we whiped into a nearby parking spot and rushed over there to snap a few quick pics before dashing back to the car and hustling (how many different synonyms can I find for "rushed"???) to the reception hall. We just got there and got parked (illegally albeit) in time to catch the wedding party strolling up to the patio. *Whew!* If anyone out there needs to lose weight and you just can't find the right exercise regime, I highly recommend taking up wedding photography as a hobby! If I hadn't gotten into the alcohol after my offifical photography duties were done, I think I might have worked off 10 lbs! But I digress...

My official duties were still yet long from over. While guests sat inside in air conditioned comfort and partook of a beverage of a social nature, Lori and I continued to snap away on the lawn with the bride.

Finally, at 5:45pm, we decided that enough was enough for that and went inside. It was time to annouce the brial party and the happy couple!

Again, Lori and I set up in different stratgic locations and shot photos of everyone as they entered and sat at the head table. We also managed to get shots of (I think - I HOPE) every one of the guests at their tables before the meal was served.

I had a reasonably decent seat and was able to sneak a few shots of the speaches and the head table with the telephoto. When it came time for the first dance, I just about had a kitten when I saw the DJ get out a fog machine. Of all the photos I took all day, those were the absolute worst. It was light shooting in peasoup. The photos are all grainy and either over exposed because the flash was bouncing off the smoke or underexposed because I tried to not use the flash and sped up the ISO setting to compensate. Frig me.

The rest of the "official" dances turned out good and I got a lot of candid shots of people dancing. Round about 10pm, they did the bouquet & garter and that was the end of things for me. Interestingly enough, my memories of the evening from then on are somewhat spotty. ;o)

I would be willing to bet that the headache I woke up with Sunday morning is directly related as well.

There was much cavorting and carrying on over the next 3 hours and much wobbly pop was consumed. I realized early into this that driving home was not going to be an option, so I called my DH to rescue us. He arrived around 11:30 and stayed until nearly 1am when he took myself, Lori, and the brother of the groom (whoa - get out of there....I'll explain more in a moment) back to our house.

I somehow mangage to remember to take the camera gear home with me, but I left the Cirrus behind and hoped for the best - and quite honestly didn't think about it again until it came time to go pick it up Sunday morning.

We got back home around 1:30am and there was a message on the phone from my mom to call Christopher's (the groom's brother) mom and let her know he was spending the night on my couch, which I did. I SWEAR I DID. I did not imagine talking to her!

Neither Lori, nor Christopher nor I were quite ready to call it a night, so Darryl went off to bed and the three of us sat out under the gazebo with a fire going in the chimnea and a glass of strawberry zinfandel and just chatted for over an hour.

Lori is my dearest friend in the world. I couldn't have pulled off what we did on my own on Saturday. Not a hope in hell.

Christopher (view his amazing blog here http://www.turnstylev2.blogspot.com/), aside from being the groom's brother, was, at one time, also a very dear childhood friend of mine. We grew up together since our mom's are best friends and have been for the better part of 30 years. When Christopher and I went to high school, we went our separate ways. We each had different interests and bonded with diverse groups of people. To be honest, I didn't give it much thought (I've appologized to him for this, too). But many teenage girls (read: me) are mean, mean girls without an ounce of sense to their names. In retrospect, I recognize this, but at the time, it never occured to me.

I always have known what Christopher has been up to over the years. His mom and my mom fill us each in on each other's lives but it was an absolute delight to sit down with him for hours and just catch up. He's grown into an amazing young man and I was literally blown away by how much he impressed me. My mom's always telling me how much she loves this guy and now, after this past weekend, I can see why!

I think, if my memory serves me correctly, we called it a night around 3 and I was up at 6am Sunday morning when I heard Simon the cat hollaring for breakfast and was afraid he would wake the whole house. I think...no - I KNOW I was still drunk at that point. I let the dogs out, fed Simon so he'd shut up, took 2 advil and went back to bed.

Darryl was getting up to leave for the Indy at 9, so I got up again at 8:30 to see him off. By the time he was gone, Christopher and Lori were awake so I admistered advil and ice water to them and we all got dressed and went to Denny's for breakfast and then picked up the (thankfully still there and intact) Cirrus. I bet we were the talk of the restaurant. Lori and I in our Sunday grubbies and Christopher in his tux since he didn't have a change of clothes!!

We got back to my house around 12 and realized none of us had taken our cell phones with us as we all had messages waiting when we got back. Ah, it's so nice to be missed! It would appear, that Christopher's mom doesn't remember talking to me at 1:30 in the morning and no one knew where Christopher ended up!! Lori's husband was looking for her so she packed up and headed home. I had nothing planned so I drove Christopher to his mom and dad's place where we met up with my mom and we all had a lovely lunch and visited for several hours with his grandma and aunt from England.

I took the PT up there and enroute I think I managed to convince Christopher that he needs to get himself one. ;o)

Darryl and I both arrived home around the same time Sunday evening and we had a nice, quite dinner together and fell into bed at an unheard of 9:30pm.

Congratulations to the newlyweds who are off today on their honeymoon. I have several long sessions of photo editing ahead of me so I know what I'm doing in any spare time I'll have over the next few weeks.

So, how'd I do???