From my first gig after graduating from Salt, Brian and Wilson’s wedding in Cambridge: perhaps this asks the question, “do you really want a documentary-style photographer shooting your wedding?” This is still one of my favorite images from that day.

But lest you get the wrong idea of how the day generally went — that’s not good documentary! — here is this picture, also.

Did I cry at this wedding? Of course, always.

What a strange, lovely thing we do, promising something as elusive as feelings, guaranteeing something as uncertain as the future. The potential for my own marriage has always alarmed the hell out of me, but weddings make it look so . . . natural. If you can love and give yourself to someone, you should. Just be there, take his hand. We create rituals for this kind of thing, so that you know what to do. We grant symbolism to the shape and materials of jewelry (forever, forever), to the weather that day (good luck, bad luck), to the color of your outfit (purity, beginnings). Everything means something today, if you want it to; everything can predict something else.

And everyone else you love is here too — like the circles we would form backstage in high school before opening night, chanting I will hold you up.

So the most wonderful thing I could possibly see that morning under the stop sign was Melissa Machovsky, the sweetest girl from our fifth grade class.

“Annie?” she said.

“Oh, I go by Adrianne now,” I said.

“Okay. Want to sit next to each other on the bus?”

Melissa became that friend for me, that girls get. Hanging out after school every day. Sleepovers every weekend. Notes passed back and forth in French class. How is it we never ran out of things to talk about? We lived only a few blocks away from each other, which made the ties even easier. We joined theater together, worked on sets, got crushes on boys, got our licenses and drove each other around. The greatest thing in the world was laying on her family’s trampoline and eating Golden Grahams out of the box.

Our junior year, we started dating two guys who were also friends. I still distinctly remember the double date we went on to the lake, walking in couples to opposite ends of the dock. Immediately upon getting into the car for our ride home together I squealed at her. “Melissa! I got GROPED!” She jumped and clapped in her seat. “Me TOO!”

And a year ago she called me in Boston. I don’t answer my phone much: mostly because it’s been broken for a while, but also because I’m rarely in its vicinity, and also because I hate phones, but the fates conspired to show me her name on the caller ID and I jumped on it. Was she okay? We never talk on the phone! What’s going on?

“We’re engaged!” she said. “AHHHH!” I said. “I know you’re in Boston, and travel isn’t always possible . . . so if you can’t come I understand,” she said. “PFFFFT!” I said. “PFFT PFFT. PFFFFFFFFT!”

Full album: here.

All on board for Marriedtown.

Never thrown.

We camped out on the deserted Woodstock fair grounds that night, under the canopy of the bandstand as a fire crackled in a tin bucket below. I realized I was getting old when, after I’d finally convinced myself there were no ghosts or wild animals to be afraid of, I jumped ten feet in the air to a deep, alien sound: only to realize it was one of the groomsmen, snoring two tents over.

The next morning I crawled crusty-eyed into the daylight, and complained about my hips.

The Showdown (larger)

Wedding Wings (larger)

View all photos from the Abacher-Sauter faux casino-style reception here.

Get your nails did.

Running down the hill.

Rachel and x-ray bathroom.

Figuring that high quantity was statistically more likely to result in some quality, I took seven hundred pictures at that wedding, and hoped for the best. (*Note: above album does not link to all seven hundred images. I would not do this to you.) I think this wound up giving pretty satisfactory results, but it had side effects. When I closed my eyes that night to go to sleep, the shutter wouldn’t turn off. Image after image flashed on my eyelids: zoom in, click, darkness, open, zoom out, click, darkness, open, over and over and over with things I’d never even seen.

I laid there, motionless in the dark of our 5-person hotel room, wishing I was storing these in a 4GB memory card somewhere.

Make like Mazzy Star and cry, cry, cry.

The wedding’s this weekend in a butterfly conservatory. I so have my camera ready.

July 8 Update: Check out the wedding pictures here.