wedding pr0n

I have read a lot of wedding blogs in the past year and a half.  Yeah, it’s been that long.  Will I still continue to read wedding blogs after the actual wedding occurs?  The very likely answer is yes.

Please also excuse the high number of “quotey fingers” I’m about to use.

One thing that I constantly notice is that many “diy” weddings that aren’t diy at all.  Not one bit.  Kind of like popular musicians who pay engineers or mandolin players to make them sound “indie”.  It doesn’t work.  John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats) sounded indie in 1993 because he had a whiny voice and he recorded his first few albums on a boombox.  And you can hear the fuzz in the background.  His newer albums are quite a bit more refined on the production end, but he’s still a good songwriter.  The “styling” is different, but the quality still exists, so it doesn’t really matter.

So no, Rob Thomas, no one cares if you put out an album and name it Exile on Mainstream.  People a) get pissed at you for an awful Rolling Stones reference and b) know that you are still the enemy of anyone who is trying to do something different, no matter how much your recording engineers made you sound like The Killers.

Anyway.  Much like the grunge/alternative labels of the 90s, “indie” has become a style rather than an ethic.  This applies particularly to weddings.  I get so annoyed when I see an endless stream of photos with soft focus and muted colors, succulents everywhere, tons of bunting with frayed edges on the fabric, and then “styling” on the photos is credited to a “wedding styling firm.”  The “y” in diy means you do it YOURSELF.  Very often because you’re too poor to pay someone to do it.  (Ask some old first-wave punks about that.)  But paying someone to make you look poor?  WTF.

Then I clicked on this wedding, and I really really enjoyed looking at these photos because it looked completely believable that the couple and their friends/family made all of these decorations. Way to go, guys!

(Clicky-clicky on the image to see more wedding photos, a la Project Wedding.)

And as my favorite wedding blogger would say?  A post-it guest book is totally rad.