Breathing Words

a woman is hard.

a bride is harder.

a wife is … we’ll see.

So we went to do our studio portrait and engagement session with our photographer. Well, first of all, some people may never have heard of the studio portrait portion of the wedding. I don’t know much about it, except that at every Chinese banquet, a large portrait (whether photo’d or painted is by preference) of the bride and groom (usually) in their wedding gear is displayed at the entrance into the banquet hall. And yes, that means the Western tradition of the groom not seeing the bride in her gown before the wedding is tossed out the window.

So the day started retardedly early at 8AM where T and I had to pile his tuxedo, my gown, all applicable accessories, and extra outfits for the engagement session into his car and drove to the make-up artist I had hired so that she could make me look proper in the portrait. I’m going to make a plug for her. Yooni was awesome. I never wear make-up (in case you missed my earlier frantic posts) and she was totally professional, sweet, and really good at her craft. Under her hands, I can totally see where the “artist” comes into the description. Three hours she sculpted and colored and dabbed and mixed and touched and curled and twisted. It was impressive. And she chatted the whole time. My ass was extremely sore the last half hour, but I figured, if she was enduring it all by standing, who was I to complain?

So was I in love with my look? Yes and no. Yes, because it was exactly what I needed that day. No, because I hate make-up and I had about a pound of pins in my hair. But, of course, that’s what it’s supposed to be like. To give Yooni credit, I didn’t feel agitated about all that stuff on my face and in my hair until a good two hours later, which is longer than you’re supposed to keep it up anyway, I think. I mean, I wasn’t wearing day-to-day make-up. I was borderline stage make-up. Heavy stuff on a hot day.

So after the make-up, my MOH picked me up (from SFV) and took me to Westwood where I could meet up with T and head over to the photographer in Laguna Beach. She’s the best. She braved the 405 twice that day with barely a pause just to get me where I needed to be. T couldn’t get off work until 2PM, so I had a good hour in Borders where six chapters of Orwell’s Animal Farm kept me from feeling TOO stupid in my fancy hair and make-up and regular clothes.

So T arrives, I pile in, and he can’t help exclaiming how like a different person I look. I know he doesn’t really like it because even I didn’t really like it. It was just too much of a transformation in such a short amount of time. But anyway, I fell asleep during the long drive (hour plus) and at one point I felt T’s hand at the base of neck supporting me so that I wouldn’t accidentally lean back and ruin the masterpiece of curls that Yooni had created. A curl or two did escape.

So *sigh* photographer. We arrived at the studio and promptly changed into our formalwear. And now, I extend the greatest respect to our photographer George at Reflection Imaging. I also want to give props to models. It is so hard to jut one way, lean another, smile, tilt, and look like you’re in love. With barely a breath to spare, we took off our formalwear, climbed into our secondary outfits (me, a summer dress; T, jeans and button-down shirt) and headed over to the beach in George’s car. (Laguna Beach is just beautiful, by the way.) The session in the studio was nothing compared to the engagement session on the beach. Rocks were climbed. Sand got in very bad places. Water came home with us in our clothes. And George, bless him, gave me a work out. My abs hurt. And I haven’t gone to the gym since Thursday. But when your photographer is knee-deep in seawater to get you that perfect romantic picture, all you can do is smile and stick your chin out a little more while keeping your shoulders back and you knee up and your hand over there and then… KISS. Or laugh, which is what T and I kept doing by the end.

So then the sun’s setting, the surf’s rising, and we head back to the studio. This time, I fell completely asleep and didn’t have to worry about the hair anymore, which had been slowly unraveling all evening. Upon arrival, I borrowed the restroom and promptly washed away as much make-up as I could (leaving the sexy fake lashes) and took pin after pin after pin from my head. At one point, T came in and was picking them out as well, like we were two gorillas. Even unravelled and stiff with hair spray, my hair looked fabulous all wavy and big. I loved it! (But I wouldn’t want to duplicate it.) George gave us a cd of our pics which we’ve yet to sort through and we headed home, but not before stopping at The Hat for some heart attack-inducing chili cheese fries with pickles and onions, a pastrami for T, and a roast beef for me. (I had been afraid to eat too much prior to that day because I didn’t want to be bloated and too big for the wedding gown.) 

So, what’s next? I don’t know. It was a lot of work just to catalogue all of this. And I’m not sure anyone’s even reading at this point, because this was insanely long…

You know, I wondered how Bob was doing today. Now I’m going to watch some Bleach.