Something truly surprising and remarkable happened at Molly and Andy’s wedding.
I go to a lot of weddings, because, you know, it’s my job. But I totally get that for many guests, a wedding is a rare event filled with excitement and joy. If you’re a guest, you might get caught up in the excitement of the moment. And then you might unintentionally do something that wasn’t such a great idea. Like stepping into the aisle to get a better angle of a photo of the bride as she walks down the aisle.
Australian photographer Thomas Stewart posted a rant about this last fall. Corey Ann wrote a great article on HuffPost full of examples of how guests taking pictures can negatively impact the professional photographer’s work. And Pittsburgh’s own Victoria Deardorff of Burgh Brides wrote this article on the Dos and Don’ts of Being a Good Wedding Guest, which includes “Do let the photographers do their job.”
Many brides and grooms are tackling this issue by having an “unplugged” wedding – putting up a sign or a note in the program, asking guests to put their cameras and phones away and just be present in the moment. The article “Going Unplugged or Going All In” on Azazie’s blog goes over the pros and cons of going unplugged, and gives some other options as well.
Have a look at some of the photos from Molly and Andy’s ceremony. Note that as Molly and her mother walk down the aisle, they’re looking at the faces of their family and friends. Not a sea of screens. If you look closely, you only see one camera in one photo. That’s it. And throughout the entire ceremony, I saw guests looking on attentively, completely engrossed in their emotional, compelling ceremony. It certainly helped that this was a very personal and unique ceremony written by Molly and Andy with their friend who acted as officiant. But I couldn’t help but be struck at how rare this was, to see guests completely riveted and screen free.
What’s the surprise? This was not actually an unplugged ceremony. Not officially. I looked at the program to see if I could find some request to put the phones away, but there wasn’t one. Later I asked Molly if she had told guests somehow that this was an unplugged ceremony. Maybe on the invitation? She said, “what’s an unplugged ceremony?”
I’m still amazed to have been among an entire group of people that chose to be in the moment, all on their own. This is a ceremony I’ll never forget.
(p.s. Maybe passing out champagne is the key… hard to take photos with a glass in your hand…)
