An emotional Twickenham wedding
I’m a little behind on blogging this, having already delivered the beautiful album package (and prints) to the client, but the first wedding of the season was an absolute corker. (In fact, I struggle to think of a better day at work. I love my job!)
Why so amazing? Well, all weddings are emotional. But this had something of an Our Tune story to it. (Cue music...)
Elizabeth and Alistair met when they were toddlers, and by all accounts were inseparable friends and destined to be together. A teenage Alistair even gave Liz a hand drawn picture of a Lamborghini Countach (what all girls dream of?) with the prescient TS Eliot inscription, “To whom I owe the leaping delight. That quickens my senses in our waking time.” (The poem’s title being the prescience, albeit nigh on 40 years early; and also the prescience not to include the second stanza...) To mix my literary metaphors, surely a latter-day Romeo and Juliet (without all the spoiler alert family feuding, deaths and suicides. So not really like Romeo and Juliet at all. Just perfectly suited young love).
But, it was not to be. Before the love could bloom into marriage, the distance (back when the country - let alone the world - was much bigger…) of living at different ends of the country led them to drift apart. Cruel fate had denied them…
Fast forward 40 years, and something happened. The unseen guiding angel of this story is Mark Zuckerberg. Or, at least, his creation. Facebook might be the home to an infinite number of annoying clickbait links, but it also has useful functions. And it was through Facebook that Liz & Alistair rediscovered each other.
Messages were exchanged. Plans to meet up were made. Friendship was rekindled. Romance was rekindled. Love blossomed again.
And here we are!
A joyous, wonderful couple and a joyous, wonderful wedding. But this is Our Tune, so it’s also tinged with sadness. In addition to the happiness and love, there were tears and sadness. Words and prayers were said for those absent. Liz’s mother didn’t get to see her daughter marry her childhood sweetheart, but her spirit was carried by all those in the room who knew her and loved her.
And that is why this was such an emotional and wonderful wedding. And I feel honoured that I was allowed to capture the highs and the lows.
[My apologies to Liz, Alistair & family for any twisting of the truth in the telling of this story. I hope the broad strokes are correct, but I was busy capturing pictures of everyone while the story was told in the speeches by Liz’s brothers, Alistair’s son and Alistair himself. It’s hard to shoot when you’re as close to tears as everyone else in the room!]