During cocktail hour, I kept passing the same group of people standing around Sarah and Mike’s crossword puzzle.
At first there were maybe three or four of them. Twenty minutes later, there seemed to be twice as many. Every time I walked by, the conversation was different but somehow also exactly the same. Someone would confidently suggest an answer. Someone else would immediately challenge it. A third person would jump in with a story from college that was apparently relevant. At one point I heard someone say something along the lines of, “No, that can’t be right because that happened after they moved.” The crossword had stopped being a crossword and had become a group project.
What I liked about it was that nobody seemed particularly interested in winning.
The puzzle was really just an excuse to talk about Sarah and Mike.
I’ve been photographing weddings long enough that I’ve become fascinated by the things guests choose to interact with. Wedding blogs spend a lot of time talking about details, but guests are remarkably honest. They’ll politely admire something beautiful. They’ll tell you the flowers are gorgeous. They’ll compliment the food. Then they’ll spend forty-five minutes gathered around something completely different because that’s the thing they actually care about.
The crossword only worked because the people in the room knew the answers.
Sarah and Mike were married at Rock Island Lake Club, which is one of those venues that always feels a little removed from the rest of New Jersey. You pull in, see the lake, and somehow your blood pressure drops a few points. I don’t know if that’s science. It probably isn’t. I’ve noticed people tend to settle in pretty quickly. Conversations start earlier. Guests linger longer. People find a spot by the water and stay there.
But when I think about Sarah and Mike’s wedding, the venue isn’t really what comes to mind first.
What I remember are the people.
I remember arriving and seeing guests already deep in conversation long before the ceremony started. I remember parents introducing themselves to people they’d heard stories about but never met. I remember friends greeting each other with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for college reunions. There was a feeling throughout the day that people weren’t simply attending a wedding. They were genuinely excited to spend time together.
And then there was the dog.
I’ve always found it interesting when couples include their dogs in a wedding because it immediately tells you something about them. Not in some deep psychological sense. I don’t think anyone’s future can be determined by whether they include a dog in family portraits. But people generally don’t restructure portions of a wedding day around things that aren’t important to them. The dog wasn’t there because someone thought it would make a cute Instagram post. He was there because he’s part of the family, and leaving him out would have felt strange.
The more time I spent around Sarah and Mike, the more I noticed little examples of that same idea.
The custom drinks. The disposable cameras. The LEGO display of the two of them and their dog. The yellow Moke they used for portraits. None of it felt like wedding décor in the traditional sense. It felt more like walking into someone’s house and noticing all the little things that make it unmistakably theirs. The details weren’t introducing Sarah and Mike to their guests. Their guests already knew them. The details were more like inside jokes scattered around the room.
The Moke was probably my favorite example.
Not because I have particularly strong feelings about Mokes. Prior to this wedding, I had spent very little time thinking about them at all. But Sarah and Mike climbed into that thing and immediately started laughing. The vehicle almost became secondary. I found myself paying less attention to what they were sitting in and more attention to how comfortable they seemed together.
I couldn’t tell you what color napkins most couples chose. I probably couldn’t identify half the floral arrangements I’ve photographed this year if you put them in a lineup. What I do remember are the strange little moments that happen around the edges of a wedding day. I remember a grandmother teaching a child how to dance. I remember a best man fixing the same crooked tie six different times. I remember a flower girl loudly informing an entire church that she was tired.
But I digress.
When I think about Sarah and Mike’s wedding now, what sticks with me are the conversations. The crossword puzzle. The dog randomly appearing in yet another photograph. Friends laughing at things that clearly made no sense to anyone outside their circle. Family members who seemed genuinely happy to be in the same room together. The dance floor eventually became crowded, loud, and delightfully ridiculous in the way great dance floors often do, complete with sunglasses, foam sticks, and people making decisions they probably wouldn’t have made at two o’clock in the afternoon. But even then, what I find myself looking at are the reactions. The people around the moments. The expressions on faces when they aren’t aware anyone is paying attention.
Maybe that’s because weddings reveal relationships better than almost anything else.
The older I get, the more I think that’s probably what most couples are hoping for, whether they realize it or not. Not a perfect wedding. Not an impressive wedding. Just a wedding that feels unmistakably like them. Looking back through Sarah and Mike’s photographs, that’s the feeling I keep coming back to.
