This wedding wasn't a job. This was a weekend spent in a place that means more to me than most, among friends and a new family that we welcomed into our own. It was interesting being a participant in and photographer. It was revitalizing and refreshing and completely overwhelming. Sam and Mai married at the infamous Beddow / Rotegard family cabin-- a cabin i've spent much time over summers past. I had never met Mai or her family and it was this really interesting and beautiful celebration of new and old, stranger and friend. I've never taken to a person as quickly as Mai. It was so easy feeling like family immediately. I can't think of better summer nights-- it's like time stopped that weekend. It wasn't like holding a breath, more like one big long exhale.
I'll end with a toast I delivered to the two-- post-night swim, post-whiskey shot:
"I want to toast to bravery. to jet lag, to first days. I want to toast to sisters introducing sisters. To taking chances. To conversation that flows easily. To the thought of someone lingering in a cluttered part of the brain. Lingering for four long years until they become all you're able to see. Like an Icelandic crescendo. Like cherry trees in spring. Like coming home.
I want to tast to compromise. To keeping meaning in your words. To staying present. To always coming back to this moment. To patience, to not having all the answers and to taking your own advice.
Build. Build a structure and keep it safe. Let it grow, let it change shape, let it see light. Let it breath wing-tipped winds. But build. Even if that means just your arms around each other, holding on."
I love you guys.
“I hope you all find yourselves sleeping with someone you love, maybe not all of the time, but a lot of the time. The touch of a foot in the night is sincere. I hope you like your work, I hope there’s mystery and poetry in your life— not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up at night and you will know that you are alive, again and again.”