GET IN TOUCH
How will I know you? Like a blind date, sometime I arrange clients by phone, and email and when the moment comes when we can meet in actual person, face to face or face to camera as it were, there’s always this awkward looking and smiling period in a public place where I am not sure if I am looking and smiling at this person who I am going to photograph or if I am just being a overly friendly stranger carrying excess glass.
So how will I know you I asked R.
“We’ll be the ladies with the cream trousers, I mean pants, and the biggest smiles!”
And, as it turns out, she was right. I saw them immediately. With the white trousers second only to their smiles. The biggest of smiles. Such joy.
From a flash of blue eyes and a saucy laugh at a party twelve years ago, these two women, like those mythical and dreamy love stories the world over, have known that they would spend the rest of their days together.
England recognizes civil partnership, and has legalized gay marriage, but at this moment in time you can’t upgrade from civil partnership to legally married, without having to dissolve the partnership first. So it made more sense to fly to Boston, and get married here, which England will recognize. Tricky, ladies.
We also bumped into the every radiant Leah Haydock, sporting a smile and a holdfast money-maker – a leather camera strap that is my current tough lady object of desire.
City Clerk Maureen Feeney, warm and full of love and blessings, presided over the ceremony. She even put down the book and gave her own impromptu blessing to close the ceremony. There were tears and laughter and laughter-soaked tears; all of the things that you find in a full on wedding day. All things distilled down to the essence of what it means to get married: unabashed and vulnerable joy.
Everyone at City Hall, even the desk clerks, absorbed some of this joy, as it was overflowing from this couple. It’s documenting weddings like this, that I am so proud to be a part of this commonwealth that supports marriage equality.
