New feature on Kuperblog! I'm going to have a bride guest blogger on the first of every month for 5 months in a row, from now through September 1st.
Here is the first post from Bride Guest Blogger Liz Garcia. I photographed her wedding to movie star Joshua Harto in September last year at the Carneros Inn. Liz is a screenwriter in LA.
TO VEIL
In the beginning, I thought I’d be a red dress bride. I figured I’m not traditional, not virginal and pure, and nor should the wedding attire be. After all, I was keeping my name, both parents would walk me down the aisle, our ceremony would make no mention of religion. And a veil was not even a possibility. Under wine country’s open skies, and walking down the aisle toward a man with whom I already shared my home, what would be the point of wearing something that in weddings past covered a woman’s face in a church? And why would I wear something so utterly different from anything any other occasion in my daily life would require? It would be like wearing a nurse’s outfit on the day of my wedding. I’m a writer, not a nurse. I’m a red dress bride, not a veil wearer. What would be the point?
Six months into marriage, I can say the point is this: it’s not your daily life, it’s your wedding. Because even if you’ve cast off the trappings of a religious or traditional wedding, there is deep meaning left still. Fact is, we get married, and we keep getting married in spite of the statistics, in spite of the challenges of melding two lives, because we are looking for meaning. We are looking for something more. More than cohabitation. More than jeans and a t-shirt. More, even, than than a fancy red dress. And that begins with a rite. With an occasion which demands a costume.
Somewhere, in the course of my 18-month engagement, something inside me shifted and I bought the costume. I wore a white dress and a veil on my wedding day. I wore two things I would never ever wear in my daily life. Two things I will never wear again. Expensive? Maybe. But frivolous? No. Not when you do the cost benefit analysis. My exceptional costume let me go to an exceptional place, a place beyond the boundaries of my daily life. It let me participate in a fearless, crazy-blissful, transcendent, powerful, intimate wedding day.
And when, in a panic over the budget, I considered returning my veil, I heard a voice in the back of my head, keening protest. It was Anna’s. And it said, via an entry on her blog, ‘I love photographing veils.’ And now that veil photograph hangs over our bed, watching over a love that predated marriage, certainly, but a love transformed, still.
(Below is the photo that hangs over Liz and Josh's bed, and yes I LOVE photographing veils!)
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anna@kuperberg.com
