I'm running a week behind, which, all things considered, is not a bad place to be. Considering that a lot of folks don't see images from their weddings until months and months after the fact, one week is okay by me.

It's funny how this age of instant gratification starts playing games with us. We keep our cell phones on 24/7, we check our voice mail 157 times a day and we can predict where and when a storm will hit the coast of Texas. Nothing is left to chance these days. I can even count on Alexandra's school bus to arrive at the corner within a three minute window every morning.

Wedding pictures do the opposite. Wedding photography, executed well, suspends time and place. While we cling to our schedules on the day of the affair, the entire purpose of wedding photography is to create a collection of images free of any time constraints. We say "timeless" a lot but don't ever give the word that much thought.

Last weekend I had photographed two weddings, one at a hotel just back from a renovation and the other at a mansion that won't host another wedding again. Neither of those two facts really mean anything, really.  Wedding pictures that are meaningful don't need to be hitched to a specific time or place. They float a bit, just high enough in the ether so that someone who picks up a photograph in fifty years says, "Oh, what a romantic wedding you had, grandma," rather than "Oh, I didn't know you got married at the (insert hotel name here.)

In the end, all of those tastings, all of those fittings, and all of those lists evaporate, giving way to the only thing that remains: the memory you have and the photographs that created it.

Jennie Melrod and Keith Queen were married last week at the St. Regis, just a stone's throw from the White House, on a gorgeous September afternoon. When I arrived at the family home, Jennie was playing with her cat, while girlfriends and moms took turns getting makeup. Everyone was in a great mood and laughter was free-flowing, always a good sign.

Their ceremony was in the courtyard of the hotel, which has undergone a beautiful restoration of late. The terrace was set up quite beautifully, with a wall of moss behind the huppa giving a Tuscan garden feel to the scene. And as luck would have it, a setting sun gave just enough backlight for the procession, at least photographically speaking. (Wedding photographers are a selfish lot.)

Later that evening, we returned to the same terrace to find the trees wrapped in lights, providing a perfect background for pictures. One can't understate the importance of little twinkly light sources--again, spoken like a true photographer.

The next day I photographed the wedding of Lori Leonovicz and Martin Weinstein at Evermay. I've written many times here about how close I feel to Evermay and it was a bit sad to know this would be the last wedding hosted there. (Don't underestimate the power of one or two cranky neighbors in Georgetown, the capital of NIMBY.)

Funny kids, goofy kids, kids with no front teeth: you name and they were there. And I think you guys know that I have a certain fondness for photographing kids at weddings. They just bring an umbrella of joy with them, and their excitement spills over to everyone else.

Ans since we're oscillating between two weddings here, it should be known that great backlight played its part at Lori and Martin's wedding, just as it did a day earlier for Jennie and Kieth. In fact, I found myself looking straight into a setting sun as Lori arrived down the aisle. It was bit of a challenge (backlight: good, glare:bad) but as you can see from the top photograph accompanying this post, it was worth the struggle! A veil filled with light like that is every photographer's dream.

I'll cut things short here, as I always do when I'm trying to get you guys some images quickly. I could write away or just give you some links and shut up. So here they are:

To see a mini gallery from Keith and Jennie's wedding at the St. Regis, click here.

To see a mini gallery of Lori and Martin's wedding at Evermay, click here.

As always, take care.

Matt

p.s. I'll be back, as usual, with my wedding from this past Saturday, one that went from monsoon to picture perfect in less than an hour. True story. And tomorrow's wedding in Middleburg will feature a jillion folks I worked with at USA Today, so that should be a blast as well.

And finally: I didn't post anything about it last weekend, as I didn't want to get too swelled a head, but I had my first op-ed piece published in Sunday's New York Times. It was a bit bizarre to see my byline next to Maureen Dowd, William Safire and Frank Rich, but there it was and it wasn't a dream. Hope you get a kick out of it.