Posted on 06/11/2006 3:14:42 AM PDT by MadIvan
WEDDING photography, once a restrained art, is becoming a risqué business. A growing number of American brides are marking their big day by commissioning portraits of themselves in raunchy poses and lingerie, writes John Harlow.
This month, when a quarter of America’s annual 2m weddings take place, brides’ parents are paying up to £6,000 for an “action photographer”, whose brief is to capture their daughter “accidentally” exposing sexy garters or her knickers.
The American wedding is changing fast. Traditionalists have already lamented a switch to homemade vows, such as “to stay together so long as we make each other laugh”, and a large-scale abandonment of white since Sarah Jessica Parker, the star of Sex and the City, got married in black.
The paparazzi-style wedding photographs are the latest shock to the establishment, although some clerics are going along with it.
Frank Ray, a Baptist minister in Tennessee, was the target of outrage when his bride published nuptial snaps of herself and her maids of honour dressed in plunging black leather bustiers on the internet. “It was fabulous fun, and something we shall always remember,” said the 58-year-old minister.
Wedding photographers say such pictures are becoming the rage across all sections of US society. Steven Gross, a Chicago photographer, said he had taken nearly 8,000 shots at a recent £100,000 wedding, but the most prominent one in the album was a close-up of bridal cleavage.
“Brides, and sometimes the groom, want to show off their gym-fit bodies,” said a spokesman for Equinox, a gym chain that offers a “wedding boot camp”.
Richard Albans, a photographer in Los Angeles, turned to wedding work after being punched by a Hollywood bodyguard.
“But I did not realise what today’s bride really wants: a true evocation of that moment when she was at her most sexually and socially powerful,” he said.
“She wants to remind her spouse why he married her. It was not just because she looked radiant in white — underneath she was downright dirty and dangerous in a black garter or red-sequinned bra.
“It’s more Las Vegas showgirl than blushing bride.”
One of his clients, who is marrying later this year, said she was planning on opening the doors to her bridal boudoir for three days before the main event. “I want a big book of photographs, showing everything from me flashing my boobs as I get dressed to my boyfriend having his chest waxed,” she said.
“It’s about intimacy, the real story, as well as silly fun.”
"People have no concept what marriage is. They think its a romantic, exciting haze you live in to make yourself happy. No wonder there are so many divorces."
Exactly.
There is nothing, I mean nothing, tackier than people who use the occasion of a sacred ceremony (such as marriage) to make a spectacle of themselves. They're confusing being at the center of a social institution with being the center of attention, a la Paris Hilton. What abysmal way to bring up a daughter.
White Trash wedding in Jail.
http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/articles/page162methkiss.html
Woman Pleads Guilty To Passing Meth During Wedding Vows???
Looks like the studio was cold.
Great pictures Richard! The young lady in the bottom shot looks sooooooo young, hard to believe she old enough to tie the knot. Maybe it's the sprinkle of freckles on her sweet face that gives that impression, or maybe it's that I'm getting very old. LOL!
Long life and many grandchildren to comfort you both in your old age.
Which was handy, cuz they needed one fer th' truck!
Hey! Where'd you get my wife's picture??
As my mother "never say anything if you can't say something nice" would say -
How wonderful you two found each other.
"People have no concept what marriage is. They think its a romantic, exciting haze you live in to make yourself happy. No wonder there are so many divorces."
Exactly.
"There is nothing, I mean nothing, tackier than people who use the occasion of a sacred ceremony (such as marriage) to make a spectacle of themselves. They're confusing being at the center of a social institution with being the center of attention, a la Paris Hilton. What abysmal way to bring up a daughter."
A lot of this thing is one-upmanship - hate to say it ladies, but I know far too many of you who intend or intended to have a bigger, more lavish wedding than anyone else, and drove everyone around them to the brink with their obsession to do so.
There is nothing more fierce than an American woman who feels she has to better than her friends and family. NOTHING.
The girls were bad, but , unfortunately, it was the boys that horrified us. Almost all of them wore make up, earings, and long, awful hair and scary looking black clothes. Creepy.
You mean like Dennis Rodman?
Wait a sec--is that van Eyck's Marriage of Arnolfini...8^)
We alsways stated - party hardy - maybe it's a regional thing.
Yup!
:)
Hey, old perfesser. I just mean that part of what makes a wedding so deeply meaningful is its sublimated connection with reproduction. I believe this is universal and deep in our psyche.
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