You're Invited to Our Wedding But Please Don't Take Any Pictures

You're Invited to Our Wedding But Please Don't Take Any Pictures

I haven't had the pleasure of standing on an altar and saying my "I Do's," not yet anyway. But I have attended a fair share of weddings, and just so happen to be in the throes of planning my own. It's a bear of a process, a veritably unending avalanche of planning, payments and perturbation.

All that for a moment -- the actual getting married part -- that takes, like, 20 minutes. Twenty minutes I never considered could be cast in an unsavory light by throngs of guests angling for the best iPhone pic.

Let me back up a bit.

Longtime wedding photographer Corey Ann waxed photographic on the Huffington Post recently, lamenting common thorns in her side while trying to capture every moment from the myriad weddings she's been hired for. There are kids shoving her out of the way, flashes ruining her shots, and just generally a mess of people vying for amateur shots of the moments she's been hired and paid to snap.

To that end, Ann brought up a trend popping up with increasingly regularity: Unplugged Weddings. Basically, you're invited to a wedding but asked to leave your celly back at the hotel.

One of Ann's friends had such a wedding. Prior to the ceremony, the officiant read the following:

Welcome, friends and family! Good evening, everyone. Please be seated. Dan and Jennifer invite you to be truly present at this special time. Please, turn off your cell phones and put down your cameras. The photographer will capture how this moment looks -- I encourage you all to capture how it feels with your hearts, without the distraction of technology.
When I first read the premise of this article, I scoffed. It's a wedding, lady, sure to be one of the most photographed events of your life. Grin and bear it. It'll all be over soon.

But now, after some brief reflection, I see some merit in this approach, albeit through a more limited application.

Consider, for a second, your typical live concert. People fork over wads of cash for the privilege of good seats, wait months for the big day. And what do they do when the band hits the stage? Fire up their smartphones to take a video. You're not watching a show at all, but recording it to watch it later. How much sense does that make?

The same can be said for a wedding ceremony. The couple who stands before you has invested considerable time and coin into making this moment worth sharing with their guests. (That's you.) It seems sad, then, that so many said guests ( that's you again) choose to watch it on a screen instead of in person.

This has happened at several weddings I've attended: Here comes the bride, all dressed in white, here comes the groom, all ... wait, he can't get through cause paparazzi guests are hogging all the f*!@ing room!

I exaggerate. But by less than you'd think. People stand in their seats, crane into the aisle or just stand right out there like they own the joint. This isn't about your iPhone's camera roll. Maybe snap a quick pic of the lovely couple from your seat and call it good?

In this vein, I don't hate the idea of an Unplugged Ceremony. I don't love it either, to be honest. I'd like to think my friends and family know better than to be inconsiderate. On the flip side, I can say from experience wedding photographers aren't cheap.

But an Unplugged Wedding? Never.

I can also say from experience open bars aren't cheap. I want everyone documenting the hell out of the resulting revelry.