Sunset, Pacific Grove, CA

Last weekend we went to a wedding (at gorgeous Asilomar, in Pacific Grove). The weekend before we had visited some friends who recently been married, and they showed us their photo album and their Polaroid album, where everyone who attended posed for a Polaroid and inscribed the page in the book where the picture was posted. In fact, some wedding crashers appeared in the book, with (their real?) names signed.

So, weren’t surprised when this wedding featured something similar. But the experience was far from perfect. As we headed from the ceremony into the reception, we waited in a long line – not to greet the happy couple, but for the bottleneck in the process – the picture. You had to complete the task in order to be granted admission to the reception. Indeed, they were not permitting couples or groups to pose together, but singling out each individual person to stand alone (while those behind them watched on) and yelling “smile” at them. Suddenly, the notion of having my picture taken took on privacy/government/civil-liberties overtones. Every single person was being documented; the celebratory feeling was drained away when they insisted upon solo shots. The wedding scenario is highly scripted, even as it evolves, and there are meanings (couplehood, for example) attached to many of the minor rituals; well there are no doubt meanings attached to all of the rituals, whether implicit or explicit. So when creating new rituals, one has to be sensitive to the context. Lining up for individual photos before we can eat evokes an immigration process; posing quickly for a snapshot with a data is celebratory.

Sure, it wasn’t a big deal and didn’t impact the wedding experience greatly, but I was impressed by the power of small details to shift meaning and reframe/reassociate an entire transaction.