VENDOR CROSSCHECK #57

We were three weeks out, and we went to Bloomington to make sure everything that could be in order was. This was a chance for us to try and influence any decisions our vendors might have made on their own and for us to make our final pleas for what we considered good taste.

We went to visit the videographer. He was, again, operating lawn equipment as we approached. We went over our preference for minimal sound effects and add-ins, such as silhouetted soccer balls or babies passing across the screen to transition from scene to scene.

“You don’t want babies?” he asked in a shocked voice.

“No babies,” we said together.

It was too late to do anything else, so we left. On the ride back, we got to wondering.

“Do you think he was asking us about having real children or not wanting the digital children in the video?” Christa asked.

“I don’t know. He seemed quite perturbed with our request. No matter what he thinks, it should keep the digital children out of the video.”

“What if he edits out all the children? So we don’t get to see Daphane and Parker; it jumps from Angie to me during the processional.”

“He couldn’t possibly do that.” Yet it did seem possible.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“Welcome to the club.”

Next we had a meeting with the DJ. The meeting was held at a café down the street from the DJ’s office. This turned out to be a meeting with the DJ and the guy we thought was the DJ but was, instead, the head of operations, so to speak—the one who organizes the event, then turns it over to the guy who shows up. The guy who organizes the event was an excellent multitasker. He managed to eat a meatloaf platter while running us through the proposed sequence of events.

The DJ himself was a much more laid-back character, with flowing facial hair that stretched from sideburns to chin and back again. He had shaved his upper lip and a little below the bottom, for a net result that was, frankly, Amish. In fact, at our reception, one guest invited by my parents actually went up and asked him his name. She claimed that she expected it to be something like Graber, since he looked so Amish. Fortunately, this interaction did not affect his performance.

During bites of meatloaf, we laid out our ideas for the reception, including various comedy clips, which we were still gathering, and our reception game, for which we were still ironing out details. We needed all our clips burned on a disc a week ahead of time, so the DJs could get organized.

They also insisted that we pick out the “ringer.” That’s a song everyone knows and loves to dance to, which gets the party started on the right foot. They literally pitched it as the song that makes or breaks your reception. They suggested “Love Shack.” I don’t like “Love Shack.” A reception that rejects “Love Shack” seems good to me. Next was “Celebration.” We decided we could work with that, which was fortunate, because that was their only other option.

Next we were off to the photographer’s studio to meet with our designated man of candid-shot persuasion. He was a bit younger than we expected and was lightning in a bottle, if that lightning had a born-on date in the seventies and had been left in the warm sun since its day of inception. Stated another way, if I was lightning, he was wool socks on carpet.

I quite often speak in a monotone, which I didn’t think was that dull, until I heard my first attempt at recording the outgoing message on our answering machine. They say tape adds about ten stages of boredom to your voice. If there is a market for reading incessantly boring novels in a horrifyingly monotone voice to aid those who are sleep deprived, write up a business plan, because I am your vocal talent. So when I take notice of the complete dullness of someone else, unrecorded no less, that is a unique moment in time. The photographer wasn’t the brooding artistic type. It seemed like we had pulled him away from a Digimon marathon to discuss an event that he simply got paid to show up at.

So in his hypnotic, slumber-inducing voice, he said, “So, why did you want to talk to me?”

“We wanted to go over some details of the ceremony and reception and what we were hoping for, in terms of pictures.”

Do you understand what we’ve been going through to get this event organized? It was quite a favor to ask, to have the Lord shine his light down on us, as we pledge our love to one another, and you better have your aperture and shutter speed set accordingly, because I don’t have any bargaining chips left for scheduling a do-over.

“It says the church is the First United. I worked there before. I know the rules,” he stated.

“Will you be there for the rehearsal to see where you need to be?” we asked.

“We don’t do rehearsals,” he said.

I am growing nervous about his “gift,” where everything will work out, because he has done it before, and he is an ar-teest.

“We would like to have some candid shots. Everything looks so rigid and posed in most of these photos. We will need some formal shots, but it looks like everyone is trying to behave, rather than enjoy themselves. At no other point in life do you stand shoulder to shoulder and angle yourself at seventeen and a half degrees,” I said.

“I can do that,” he drones on.

“Well my confidence is at an all-time high. I guess we’ll see you at the wedding and good luck to both of us.”

We left feeling a bit concerned about our prospects for wonderful photo documentation of our glorious day.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival