The bride and groom were fine, a bit overwhelmed by family and friends, but on-task and safely checked into the hotel the night before the wedding. Those of us in the wedding party staying back at their apartment woke up anxious, however. We moved around in our little loops, affected by that vague sense of many things left undone that cloud the hours leading up to weddings. Then I remembered that there was a bottle of rosé in the fridge left over from the welcome reception two days prior--before the bachelor party, the bachelorette party, the rehearsals, and all of it. Poured glasses for myself and a bridesmaid and the jumpy nerves mellowed out instantly. Being in New Orleans didn't hurt on the mellowing.
Bride Leah, seen from above at the hotel, on the way to get photos done. Love this shot.
In the groomsmen's room, which was really the bride and groom's room that we commandeered. Drink of choice: Maker's, rocks.
The bride and the brother. You'd hardly Kevin is a gonzo snowboarding stuntboy with a YouTube handle of "Gutterball" that afternoon.
No, rather more Jazz Age bootblack. In fact, he did help me polish my shoes that afternoon.
Mother of the groom, adjusting her shoe. What is it about women in fancy dresses adjusting their shoe straps? Something very lovely about it.
There was some consternation in the groomsmen's room before the wedding. I'd spoken to groom Mike from New York about some wardrobe details and when the topic of bowties came up and whether we should get clip-on or go old school I cavalierly insisted we'd be fine with old school. It was not to be so easy. I'd figured that with YouTube how-to videos and the fact that Mike is a tech guy, and a musician, and the rest of the groomsmen were musicians too, a fairly high collective level of smarts and deterity would get it sorted. An hour or so later we had some sad looking bowties between us.
How many musicians does it take to tie a bow-tie? For a moment it seemed like it would take more than we had. The good news was: we didn't have any extra time or energy to worry about any wedding details.
Mid bowtie crisis we had an unexpectd visit from the bride. I think we managed to conceal our ineptitude.
Very chic.
Details, Esquire and GQ all failed us on the video how-to front. But it was this fellow Charles French who we discovered who finally cracked the code for us. Respect & Thanks!
Success at last. Getting it tied properly around the groom's actual neck took some more time, but at least I hadn't ruined the wedding.
It's a fine thing to have the groom playing at the wedding. Frequent co-hort in music Ian Smith films the occasion.
The morning before the wedding friends and family were arriving in New Orleans and that inescapable level of tension that surrounds that kind of confluence of personalities, details and never-ending texts was building. But I remember waking up and hering Mike and Leah in their living room, moving around and packing and getting organized and strategizing how to contend with all these various players and as overwhelming as it all must have been they just kept breaking out into laughter, over and over. And I thought, if they can be consistently amused by this whole massive, overwhelming thing, and find the same things in it funny, and crack each other up then that was an excellent indicator of their future together.
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