revising her tone. "Oh!"
"I shouldn't have gone back to Pineville yesterday. I should have just flown down for the wedding, like I originally planned, then back to New Jersey to see Sunny
before flying to Chicago ..." But if I hadn't changed my plans, I wouldn't have run into Marcus Flutie.
"No, you did the right thing," Hope insists. "Bridget and Percy understand. With them, it's not about the ceremony, it's about everything that comes after."
"Yeah, I know," Jessica replies. "But I'm kind of a major part of the ceremony."
"If it makes you feel any better, they've found a backup minister, you know, just in case."
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
This does not make Jessica feel any better. Of course Bridget and Percy found another minister, you know, just in case. It was the practical thing to do, but the news overwhelms Jessica nevertheless. Hearing that they have prepared themselves for the probability of another no-show forces Jessica to pinch back the swelling storm of emotion gathering between her eyes.
77?/s is too much, she thinks. This is all too fucking much.
"He's a pro, the local go-to guy for secular celebrations," Hope is saying, totally unaware of Jessica's meltdown. "We crashed one of his services today so we could check him out. He's not so bad, though he acts as if he's the first minister to ever come up with the whole spiel about how wedding rings are circles, and circles
symbolize eternity, and that this ceremony symbolizes the bride and groom's eternal love."
Hope has heard just about every version and variation of the modern wedding ceremony. Before she made a name and a living with her portraits and original
paintings, Hope had attended approximately two hundred weddings in her two years of employment with Capture the Moment. This photography firm specialized in
documenting wow-factor weddings involving acrobats, belly dancers, drag queens, drum cores, magicians, fireworks, Klezmer bands, celebrity look-alikes (fat Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Thriller-era Michael Jackson are very popular), Disney On Ice (the princesses, mostly) on a portable dance rink, and a combination of the Viennese table and Japanese Nyotaimori known as the Naked Human Dessert Tray. Such tacky pageantry was enough to turn even a swoony romantic like Hope into a valentine-stomping hater.
But it was the trend toward paparazzi-style wedding photography—wherein Hope was paid to stalk the future Mr. and Mrs. D'Abruzzi-Glazer in the weeks leading up to their wedding as if they were Hollywood A-listers whose every gesture was worthy of a million flashbulbs—that epitomized the loss of moral values in favor of production values and gave Hope the final incentive she needed to quit the business once and for all. Bridget and Percy never would have asked her to make a reluctant return to the genre. Hope surprised them by offering up her services for free.
"I need to document two people who care more about the marriage than the wedding," Hope said a few months ago, when she first told Jessica about her role in
Bridget and Percy's celebration. "It will give me, um, hope." She half laughed, the way she always did when she caught herself optimistically evoking her own name. "I have to remember to make the photos about Bridget and Percy and not give in to the temptation to make it a crass composition of contrasts. His dark skin, her white skin. Dark suit, white dress. Dark sky, white sand. The stuff of dorm room posters the world over." She sighed in admiration. "Jeez oh man, those two are so gorgeous.
Who could pass up the opportunity to photograph them? I don't know how they manage to do anything else, quite frankly. If I looked like either one of them, I would just spend every minute of every day capturing my own gorgeousness as a form of performance art."
"You could do that," Jessica said from another bedspread. Another assortment of minibar snacks.
Another hotel room somewhere.
"I shouldn't have gone back to Pineville yesterday. I should have just flown down for the wedding, like I originally planned, then back to New Jersey to see Sunny
before flying to Chicago ..." But if I hadn't changed my plans, I wouldn't have run into Marcus Flutie.
"No, you did the right thing," Hope insists. "Bridget and Percy understand. With them, it's not about the ceremony, it's about everything that comes after."
"Yeah, I know," Jessica replies. "But I'm kind of a major part of the ceremony."
"If it makes you feel any better, they've found a backup minister, you know, just in case."
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
This does not make Jessica feel any better. Of course Bridget and Percy found another minister, you know, just in case. It was the practical thing to do, but the news overwhelms Jessica nevertheless. Hearing that they have prepared themselves for the probability of another no-show forces Jessica to pinch back the swelling storm of emotion gathering between her eyes.
77?/s is too much, she thinks. This is all too fucking much.
"He's a pro, the local go-to guy for secular celebrations," Hope is saying, totally unaware of Jessica's meltdown. "We crashed one of his services today so we could check him out. He's not so bad, though he acts as if he's the first minister to ever come up with the whole spiel about how wedding rings are circles, and circles
symbolize eternity, and that this ceremony symbolizes the bride and groom's eternal love."
Hope has heard just about every version and variation of the modern wedding ceremony. Before she made a name and a living with her portraits and original
paintings, Hope had attended approximately two hundred weddings in her two years of employment with Capture the Moment. This photography firm specialized in
documenting wow-factor weddings involving acrobats, belly dancers, drag queens, drum cores, magicians, fireworks, Klezmer bands, celebrity look-alikes (fat Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Thriller-era Michael Jackson are very popular), Disney On Ice (the princesses, mostly) on a portable dance rink, and a combination of the Viennese table and Japanese Nyotaimori known as the Naked Human Dessert Tray. Such tacky pageantry was enough to turn even a swoony romantic like Hope into a valentine-stomping hater.
But it was the trend toward paparazzi-style wedding photography—wherein Hope was paid to stalk the future Mr. and Mrs. D'Abruzzi-Glazer in the weeks leading up to their wedding as if they were Hollywood A-listers whose every gesture was worthy of a million flashbulbs—that epitomized the loss of moral values in favor of production values and gave Hope the final incentive she needed to quit the business once and for all. Bridget and Percy never would have asked her to make a reluctant return to the genre. Hope surprised them by offering up her services for free.
"I need to document two people who care more about the marriage than the wedding," Hope said a few months ago, when she first told Jessica about her role in
Bridget and Percy's celebration. "It will give me, um, hope." She half laughed, the way she always did when she caught herself optimistically evoking her own name. "I have to remember to make the photos about Bridget and Percy and not give in to the temptation to make it a crass composition of contrasts. His dark skin, her white skin. Dark suit, white dress. Dark sky, white sand. The stuff of dorm room posters the world over." She sighed in admiration. "Jeez oh man, those two are so gorgeous.
Who could pass up the opportunity to photograph them? I don't know how they manage to do anything else, quite frankly. If I looked like either one of them, I would just spend every minute of every day capturing my own gorgeousness as a form of performance art."
"You could do that," Jessica said from another bedspread. Another assortment of minibar snacks.
Another hotel room somewhere.
Similar Books
