For a long time now a theory has been going round in my head, and it only grows more relevant the more wedding stories I photograph. According to this theory there are two kinds of couples. Couples who get married because it is the next logical step in the relationship, according to their logic, of course, and couples who get married simply because they want to, because they feel like it. Maybe this is just nonsense, but I think that, deep down, it says a lot.
Let me explain. I always say that a wedding is a party, a demonstration of the love of two people who decide, one fine day, to gather their dearest family and friends to celebrate that love together. I think this description steers completely clear of the commitment or the obligation to do something because it is supposed to be the right thing, or because “that’s what’s next”. Even so, it is nothing more than that, a simple theory. In fact it is a theory I cannot even test, because luckily, and I hope it stays that way, so far only couples of the second kind have hired me. Couples who love each other madly and who, as a rule, on the wedding day, in the moments before the ceremony and during it, are a bundle of nerves because of the nerves and the emotion of the step they have gladly decided to take.
A clear example of this is Alejandro and Mamen. I remember that we clicked perfectly from the very start. We met barely a year before their wedding at the “Salamanca Nupcial” fair, in the Multiusos Sánchez Paraíso. They had gone to the fair, like hundreds of other couples, to look for what they needed for the big day. From what they told me the first time we met to talk everything through calmly, that day they were already heading home, quite overwhelmed after visiting most of the fair and not having found a photographer who was precisely and exactly what they were looking for, when, just before leaving, Mamen saw a photograph at a stand and said to Alejandro, “THAT’S OUR PHOTOGRAPHER”.
The photograph Mamen saw was one of my favourites, and one of the ones I think best represent me and what I try to capture in every wedding story. It could only be the one of Marcos trying to hold back tears of emotion in front of his grandmother just after the ceremony. It turns out that Mamen had seen this photograph online some time before, but she did not know whose it was, or even whether it was by a photographer from Salamanca, and when she saw it just before leaving the fair, she felt it was a sign.
About this photo, or about why I focus so much on this kind of photograph instead of on the epic post-wedding photographs, I will talk at length another time. But let us say, briefly, that with the couple who hires me because of a photograph like the one of Marcos with his grandmother, I think I will click instantly. Simply because they will hire me for valuing the same thing I value. The moments. The memories. Everything that cannot be posed, forced or repeated. What is real. What is authentic. But, as I say, that is not what we are talking about now. And I did not choose the summary of their wedding to talk about it. I decided to share with you my wild theory of the two kinds of couples, over the photographs of their wedding, for a simple reason. They are the very physical embodiment of half of that theory.
Alejandro and Mamen are a couple who, after a great many years together, after travelling halfway around the world, already with a home, with two children, and with what many people would consider “a life sorted” (which should not take away from all the effort both of them put in behind it), have decided to get married. Not because it is what they have to do. Not because it is their turn. Not because people insist that it is the right thing. But because, simply, purely and plainly, they feel like it. Because one fine day they decided they wanted to gather the people they loved most and celebrate it with them. Can you think of any better reason than that? Because I personally cannot.
But… does any of this have anything to do with what the wedding is like? Yours truly, who still does not know how he managed to focus the ceremony photographs with watery eyes, thinks it does. The emotion, the looks, the love, the closeness between the two of them, between their family and friends, Lucía and Álvaro who, like good children, were not exactly still during the ceremony, the simplest and purest expression of love you can imagine, and much more… that is what I saw and lived alongside them at their wedding.
Theirs was a ceremony that broke me inside, that for almost an hour made me suffer intensely from the explosive mix of wanting to cry and laugh at the same time while I tried not to miss the smallest instant. The celebration was exactly that, what I said at the beginning. A party. Or rather, a proper party, in which nobody stopped eating, drinking, dancing and having fun for almost twelve hours. But anyway… it is very easy to “sell” it with words… so I will leave you with a short summary of what was ALEJANDRO AND MAMEN’S BIG DAY!!! 😀
Photographer of weddings full of life
Photographer
DAVE CASANOVA