In college, I started to get a lot of offers to film weddings. I took the offers back then since I figured I could use the money, but I never thought about filming weddings as a full-time profession. Even though the money was nice, it was a lot of work and there was a lot of stress to the job. For one, there are no reshoots at a wedding, so that is an unbelievably huge amount of pressure to get things right from the beginning. This is made extremely difficult by poor planning. I don’t mean to rail against wedding planners, but I think they should all have a basic background in how video cameras work (and how wind and dark lighting affect them) so they can take that into account at weddings. Needless to say, it’s not a profession that suits me and the gray hairs on my head can attest to that. It’s also weird to be at a wedding of a couple you don’t know. It ‘s even worse, and extremely lonely, when you’re sitting by yourself or next to a stranger (the photographer) with no friends in sight.
After filming a couple of weddings after college, I got out of the business entirely. It took me awhile to readjust myself to being a guest at wedding. I wasn’t thinking about how I would shoot a wedding when I was invited to one, but I needed to readjust to enjoy weddings again. It was a gradual process and after going to a couple of friend’s weddings, I stopped feeling bad about leaving when I wanted to or having more than enough to drink, and most importantly, I was happy for the couples again, instead of fearing what kind of crazy demands they would have post-honeymoon.
I spent my 28th birthday at my friend’s wedding. Some people asked me if I was bitter that my friend had his wedding on “my day”, but I was fine with it. (I know how much insane planning goes into a wedding, so if my friend had to choose that day, I’m sure it’s because it was the best deal or he didn’t really have much of a choice.) People are always out of town around my birthday anyways because it’s the day before the 4th of July and a lot of the people who were invited to his wedding were people that I would’ve invited to my birthday party, so either way, I would be spending the day with friends. Plus, there’s nothing noble in saying “I’m not going to your wedding because it’s my birthday, and I’m going to fight you for our friends.”
People wished me a happy birthday at the reception and there was good food, cake, and an open wine/beer bar. I spent a part of the night talking to two pastor’s wives about the intellectual value of Sponge Bob Square Pants and why I respected the girl from iCarly (she’s the teacher’s pet in School of Rock) until I found out she wanted a singing career but that she’s still better than Hannah Montana (who is the spawn of the man who wrote “Achy Breaky Heart”). So basically, I acted much like I would have if it was my birthday dinner.
The past couple of years have been very transitional for me, so while I enjoyed the weddings I was invited to, those weddings also brought up a host of issues that I’ve had to deal with either because of the people I ran into or because what was going on in my life in general. Starting last year, with the wedding of my friends Ed and Nicole, I’ve been able to enjoy these special days out of sight, out of mind, and while I’m not advocating that my friends constantly get married on the weekend of my birthday, I don’t harbor any feelings of resentment, because honestly, in my early to mid 20s, there wasn’t a whole lot to celebrate anyways and the fact that I’m enjoying the things I’m supposed to again is hopefully a sign that I’ve survived a lot of the volatility that I’ve had to experience in my 20s. An older friend of mine told me that around 30 is when people really figure themselves out (with exceptions of course). I didn’t really know what that meant and at one point of my life I wanted to be 25 forever. Professional athletes tend to peak around 27-29 and now that I think about that, it makes sense. It’s a time where people are physically, mentally, and emotionally in good shape, and hopefully I’m also at my peak.
Perhaps I’ll never be #1 at anything, but I hope at this point, I can let the game of life come to me and that I can put myself in the best position for success. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a paid writer, or paid to do my show, but at least I can be happy on my own b-day and happy for my friends when they find happiness, and while that sounds petty, I sure feel like I’ve come a long way.
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