Andrew & Florina {wedding}

I also shot this wedding two weekends ago. This was my longest wedding coverage to date - nine hours. NINE. Both the bride and groom are from Romania, as are their families. The ceremony was two hours long, entirely in Romanian. As in, ALL OF IT. I didn't have a clue what was going on, what was said, or when the big events were happening. Fortunately, I had two people helping me out - the brother of the groom, and the guy who was doing video. The video guy is one of my former grooms, and I referred this couple to him. He's an awesome guy and we had a great time working together. We also had quite a few moments during the ceremony when we weren't shooting where we were creating our own translations of the Romanian stuff. It kept the nine hour day pretty light and funny. The entire day was somewhat of a challenge simply because of the language barrier. The bride didn't speak a word of English - this made it pretty hard to convey what I needed her to do for posing. In fact, much of the stuff the couple wanted seemed very cheesy and almost tourist poses, in my opinion. But, their wish was my command, so I got everything they wanted, combined with some stuff I wanted.

 

We started the day at the brother's house, and then moved to the (dreaded) Depot. It was about 9:45 by the time we got to the Depot, meaning everything I wanted to use was in full sun. This is one reason I hate the Depot for shoots. There is no forgiveness from the sun for the bulk of the day. Plus, it was cold and really windy that morning. Everyone was miserable. We made quick work, until our fingers were numb, and then headed to the church.  Here are some shots of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fortunately for me, I didn't have to worry much about missing any of the big moments during the ceremony - they don't do any sort of ring exchange or first kiss. Strange....but I guess that's their culture. Andrew and Florina did get rings for each other, though they didn't wear them around the family. I'm not sure if it's looked down upon, but I could tell they were nervous every time I asked for the rings to do pictures. As soon as we were done with pictures, they immediately took the rings back off.

 

The ceremony, though long, was entertaining. It was sort of like a concert, really. There were a couple different preacher guys, several people who sang, some instrumental portions, and some sort of blessing at the end.

 

 

 

Had to catch some of Mike in action.

 

 

They do, however, do the cutting of the cake, which was like 5 tiers high. It was a huge cake.

 

 

And there's your walk-through of a Romanian wedding.