My planned schedule of alternating blog posts with editing and posting some Mexico pictures was somewhat sidetracked, but in a good way. My niece Angela Nickel married Chris Fielding on May 5th at the Bethel Mennonite Church in Langley, followed by a reception at the Matsqui Community Hall here in Abbotsford. You may remember that we attended their engagement party last year. Rudy, the bride’s father and Karin’s brother, lives a few blocks away from us and so we heard numerous updates in the wedding planning. I knew that they had hired a known and expensive photographer, but just before the wedding they found out the price did not include his presence at the reception! They asked that I bring along my full camera gear, but stressed that I was there as a guest and to not devote all my time to taking pictures.
The wedding was a nice ceremony that lasted just the right amount of time, something very important if you want your guests to remember it as a good experience. Karin had convinced me that I should leave my camera in the car for the church portion, only for us to find out that everyone else had their cameras and the pastor started with an announcement that they were welcome, but you were asked to remain seated. That did not bother me too much, as they had the professional photographer; but I was not to sure after I watched him for a bit. To begin with, I was a little surprised that someone that works weddings every week would show up in just dress pants and a t-shirt, but I was even more horrified to notice that he spent most of his time taking pictures from a distance, and rarely got in close. He had a decent zoom on his camera, but you do need some variety! We had sat in the back at the end of the pew, so that we were right at the door that each of the bridal party and then the bride herself entered, and I would have loved to grab some shots there.
After the ceremony we killed some time at Waltrude’s house while the wedding party went to Mill Lake Park to take pictures, and then we headed to the reception. When Karin and I were married, location had been a worry as there are not many nice halls in the Abbotsford region. Matsqui Hall was too big for our wedding, but is the best one in the area for a sizable crowd. The only issue was that I was probably one of the few people that knew where it was located, so I found myself giving a few people directions.
Once I got to the hall, the bride’s mother Gisela looked especially relieved that I had brought all of my equipment, explaining that she had broken her own camera two days before the wedding and imploring me to be sure to take pictures of every table as there were many guests from her family that came in from far places such as Ontario. I therefore snapped even more pictures than I had planned to take, and editing them took a while (quite a few got a “good enough” grade, and would not be pictures I would usually show). I finished them yesterday, and then started them posting to our Flickr account as I went to bed last night. The upload took until 1:00 this afternoon, but they are finally all up. I’m also pleased that I learned a few things about the various software I was using that I will be able to apply to the Mexico pictures.
If you were there or are just curious, and want to look at them all, you can see the set. Alternatively, you can view a slideshow or see them all on black. For the ultimate experience, I recommend PicLens, but I’ll save explaining it for another post.
Realizing that many of you probably don’t want to sort through well over 100 photos of people that you don’t know, here are some of the ones I would have posted had I been restricting myself. As always, clicking on them takes you to the original on Flickr, where you can view the full sized version.
