There is a particular sound a record makes right before the music starts, a soft crackle, like the needle clearing its throat. It was as if it was getting ready to play something beautiful but still a little nervous. Relatable. This was my first wedding film with my then new Canon C70s. The first time I was shooting without digital stabilization. The first time I was working a wedding with my new and in-training photographer girlfriend. And of course because it’s New Mexico it was really windy that day, enough to push the stylus off its groove. Enough to make people in suits run after things that look so nice they suddenly decided to go on a little trip. None of this mattered of course. The warmth that Josh & Natalie brought to their wedding was the kind that speaks to all jitters and reminds you that everything is grand. Some of that came from the couple themselves. Natalie and her groom chose orange for a color story and committed all the way through. The suit was orange. The mustache matched it in spirit, if not exactly in shade. Someone had wired real orange peels into the ceremony arch. And it was that detail that sold me on this wedding.

For you see I wasn’t hired, not exactly. Okay, I was, but to run sound for the DJ. Christina Swilley is a wedding vinyl legend in Santa Fe, her top notch selection required top notch sound. That’s where I came in. But when I met Josh, saw his suit, saw the orange peels, when I felt his love for Natalie, which was so well matched, and given to everyone around them, I offered to shoot their wedding as well, no charge. They didn't have anyone for video, they only had hired a film photographer to get some analog keepsakes. Great fit with the vinyl.

“It’s for my portfolio.” And it was, but that doesn’t really capture it. I wanted to tell a story about their story. I loved the aesthetic, I loved the venue, and I already loved them. The day I stop giving away work is the day I should hand over my cameras to someone that will. The occasional free gig reminds me that this is my choice, and I do it because I love it. And needless to say they were thrilled. It felt like a way to bless a marriage by giving just a little bit of the love back to them. No one deserved it more than Josh and Natalie. It turned out to be the sweetest wedding I have ever shot. Josh and his bride cried through most of the ceremony, and everyone else cried more. They are the kind of family that has clearly been practicing love for a long time. You could feel it before anyone said a word, and you could still feel it hours later on the dance floor. Everything about the day matched that warmth. The bolo tie. The orange, absolutely everywhere from the sunburnt gates of the Hotel Mystic to the flowers and even a little detail worked into the invitations. The whole afternoon felt cheerfully and completely down to earth, like a wedding that never once considered being anything fancier than exactly itself. And the wind. The wind that rearranges a seating chart into something like modern art and takes a valiant swing at a ceremony arch. Everything at that venue went over except my tripod, which I plan on mentioning for the rest of my career, and Natalie somehow kept every flower in her hair too. I lost all my handheld steadiness and spent the afternoon wondering if this is why shaky footage is secretly trending in documentary style wedding films. We artists have a nice word for our mistakes. We call it style. The vows themselves were funny and cute and completely sincere at once, which might be the hardest combination to land at any wedding. During the edit, I went with split screen and alternating vows so it plays like Natalie and Josh gently complimenting each other half to death. It’s always so fun to pick your favorite parts and words and images to include. It’s something that takes trust. Of course the hardest part of editing is often what to disinclude. None of the speeches made the final cut and not because they were not wonderful. They were. Natalie’s father orated powerfully, tie flapping wildly. What he said was so personal, and so poetic. I know it wasn’t this way, I have footage to prove it wasn’t, but in my memory when he was speaking the wind silenced itself. It actually took me in. I listened to a man I had never met speak of his life’s greatest work, raising his daughter. Of all the ways he took from himself to give to her, that being a dad means wanting your child to have more than you ever did. And finally, after all that sacrifice, the endless giving to and for and because, the best love you can give your daughter is giving her to another to take care of her, letting that person love her even more than you can. None of us needed to be told how Josh was that man. We were told by Natalie’s father that his sorrow in letting her go gives way to joy knowing how well she will be loved. And here is now, sending her on this journey, where she will someday do the same for their own child. In that moment I felt where this all comes from. I had to break out of the trance to run the levels. I was still there for sound after all. And even though none of those words made it into the film, Natalie still has the audio in full, start to finish, because some things are simply too good to just disappear. So despite whatever style we call authentic, ‘documentary’ is still a misnomer. You can’t capture it all, there will always be something important missing. You can only do your best to try to capture the feeling, as we felt it. The reception ran entirely on vinyl as well, courtesy of Christina. As the sun set, the summer night carried forward that same warm, well loved feeling only good music can create. People danced to records popping softly under a string of warm patio lights. The song picked for the film, You and Me, by Durand Jones and the Indications, straight off the record, no shortcuts. Somewhere past midnight, bolo tie still on, suit still gloriously orange. Josh turned out to be a genuinely wonderful dancer. And I gotta say, boy knows how to twerk. I think about that crackle again, writing this now. The bit of noise right before the good part starts. That is more or less the whole job, if you get down to it. You are not writing the song. You just show up early enough to catch the groove. On this particular day, the crackle belonged to two people who make loving each other look like the only natural thing to do.