well this was a heck of a wedding for two reasons. one reason is that is was a heck of a wedding. the second is that my wife‘s water broke twenty minutes before the wedding was over.

ok here’s the deal. christine and johnny had their huge wedding at crystal lake on october 30th (yes this is another catch-up blog post). we were due to have our first child on october 27th, smack dab in the middle of a wedding i had on the 23rd and christine and johnny’s on the 30th. when i found out we were due on the 27th, i alerted the brides of both weddings and told them they were free to find another photographer if they wanted. their other choice was to take their chances on having me do it and if i couldn’t then i would have a backup photographer provided for them. they both kindly chose to have me still do it.

i took my buddy and fellow photographer john to the wedding. the plan was for him to second shoot a little bit and basically be there in case i had to leave. everything was going well – i took the getting ready shots at the renaissance hotel in providence, made it over to praise tabernacle church in cranston for the ceremony, rode over to roger williams park for family shots at the temple to music, and then to downtown providence for some cool bridal party shots out on the street.

i was real glad we got to take the trip into providence. i think the bridal party thought i was kind of crazy when i had them taking pictures in dirty providence parking garages and in front of scuzzy night club buildings. oh well.

we headed over to crystal lake for the reception where the party was already in full gear. i love the high energy from a big wedding, it feels like there’s so much stuff happening. christine and johnny expressed their relief that we made it this far into the night and i hadn’t got ‘the call’ yet. i felt relieved too; to get to the final stage of the wedding was huge.

people got on the dance floor about twenty-two seconds after salad was served. i’ve never seen anything like it. people went back to eat the next course and went right back to the dance floor. it continued like that through the whole meal. by the time dessert came i don’t think hardly anyone cared because they were all out on the floor dancing.

it was about 10:30 when i got a call from tara. she said she felt a little weird and she wasn’t sure if her water broke. hmmm. i asked her if she wanted me to leave. she said no because she didn’t think it had happened. i was about thirty minutes from home while at crystal lake. i told john what was up and went back to the wedding and tried my best to concentrate on it. 10:40 rolled around and i got another call from tara. ok this was for real. come home. i ran back in the wedding, grabbed my stuff, told christine and johnny i had to take off, let john know i had to go, and ran to my car not having any idea what was about unfold in the next few days… but that’s for another blog post. for now, take a look at some more photos from the very last wedding i ever shot as a non-dad.

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