pursuing the picture perfect wedding
As promised, here are some more images from the editorial floral shoot featured in the 2010 edition of Ceremony Magazine. Designed by Michael Mantalos, Louloudi Design. Linens by LaTavola Linen. Thought you might like some cheery color yourself.
photos: Gia Canali
As a photographer who enjoys photographing weddings, I’m all for real real weddings. But it’s so much fun to make editorial photographs of all those hypothetical (and totally attainable) picture perfect details. On newsstands now is the 2010 issue of Ceremony Magazine with a few of my photographs from a shoot I did over the summer with Michael Mantalos, the floral designer behind Louloudi Designs. The color palette was so lovely that I left the shoot wanting to do a painting in those colors. I promise to share a few more images soon.
photos, except magazine cover: Gia Canali; florals and design, Michael Mantalos; linens, LaTavola
We all know it’s important to dance with your beloved. But don’t forget your friends! Not only does it make for good photos, it makes for good memories.
photo: Gia Canali
Merry Christmas, friends. I hope the holidays are dazzling and warm for you this year.
photo: Gia Canali
Your wedding is not the ultimate statement of who you are as a couple. I mean: your wedding should certainly reflect you two more than it reflects just the idea of wedding. Of course. But—and I know this is hard, and that my husband and I didn’t quite manage it ourselves when we wed—don’t let yourselves get out of hand. Weddings are really just a public acknowledgment, an affirmation, marking the beginning of the adventure of your (official) partnership—kind of like a bon voyage. Our parents and grandparents had such different weddings. They walked to the county courthouse, or married at a neighborhood church, with a party in Grandma’s back yard. These weren’t grand affairs, at least not in my family, but I have such romantic ideas about them: my parents and grandparents have beautiful photographs by which I still imagine those weddings.
Weddings are now so much bigger and more splendid and more extraordinary in design and scope than I possibly could have imagined when I was a little girl. When we all were. But. How you live your married life, each and every day, or rather the sum of your days, eventually becomes a much more powerful testimony of who you are as a couple. So, plan the wedding you imagine, great or small, near or far, lavish or serene. I hope it is a wonderful and honest celebration (and that the photographs are fantastic, too!). I’m just saying, I hope your marriage is even more marvelous. Were it up to me, and were my husband and I so extraordinarily lucky, I’d rather let our fiftieth anniversary than our wedding be that ultimate statement of who we are together.*
photo: Gia Canali
p.s. My husband says I should say that perhaps the “tip” here, if there really is one, is to plan your wedding for the couple you want to become.
I found this photo while I was digging through my archives, searching for something else. It’s such a happy find! LA is a bit dreary today, even though we are all pretty thrilled about the rain (we wait for it ever-so-long …).
photo: Gia Canali
This is just for fun! Sometimes weddings (and soon-to-be-wed couples) can take themselves a little too seriously. I love when a groom has the panache and playfulness to pull off a polka-dotted tie.
photo: Gia Canali
This past weekend, I stumbled upon an exhibition of Lillian Bassman photographs here in LA. The photographs were stunning—and, as Emily Dickinson would say, I felt as if the top of my head were taken off. I couldn’t believe I’d never seen Bassman’s work before. Each woman she photographed was a classic beauty in the way people used to describe old-time movie stars and models. Long necks and long evening gowns, gloves, hats, and silk and lace lingerie certainly added to the effect, but there was something else that made the women and their photographs so extraordinary. I think I’d still be hard-pressed to articulate exactly what that is. The word that comes to mind is grace, or maybe poise. These women knew how to hold themselves. And Bassman knew how to present them. Gloriously. As I left, I felt dazzled by the photographs, but also wondered where all our glamour had gone. Like: were women only really beautiful in the 1940s and 50s? (We were puritans and pioneers before and hippies and porn stars afterward). Or, what in the world had the sexual revolution done to beauty? Did we lose something we should have saved?
A bride on her wedding day is a rare exception, the only one I can think of easily. A bride can be a classic beauty: feminine, graceful—in ways that seem ever otherwise out of place in our culture. A woman’s wedding day is the one day in her life where it’s socially acceptable to do and be the things those classic beauties, in their heyday, did and were. I just wish (sort of wistfully—it seems practically impossible) that we could feel more comfortable with a sort of everyday elegance than we really are nowadays, that we could somehow hold onto part of our once-in-a-lifetime bridal beauty knowledge in daily life. I am implicating myself here, too. I’ve worn makeup only about three times in my life (and not that makeup matters much in the point I am making, but I am embarrassed to say I don’t even know how to put it on). I digress. I am lucky I choose to photograph brides, for I get to photograph women on the day they are their most beautiful. This is just to say: brides, all of you are so lovely, true beauties, each and every one. Cheers to you!
A quick read on Lillian Bassman’s career will reveal that she destroyed much of her body of work in the 1960s, and for decades quit altogether making photographs for fashion magazines. She was wholly frustrated by the new breed of models in the 60s; everything was different. Fortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever see that in my line of work and art.
photo: Gia Canali
