Tara Colton laughed a lot on her wedding day.

In a bride, this is a good quality. In fact, in the second it takes me to conjure the other possibilities ("They said the shrimp would be jumbo, not large!"), I'm absolutely positive that laughter is the way to go. And in the case of Tara Colton, who married Jed Teres last week on a beautiful hill on a beautiful farm on a beautiful day, there wasn't much chance we'd get anything else.

You see, Tara is the daughter of David Colton, an editor at USA Today and one of the funniest guys I've ever known.

David's humor is hard describe. Sure, there's a Woody Allen thing going on, as looks go, but his jokes are always more pointed and they come at you much, much quicker. If you're not fast enough, you don't keep up. And best of all is that they're always delivered with a bit of exasperation and a flip of the hand that can't be replicated in print.

For instance, the other day I was relating to David an incident that had happened to me at lunch, when a very old man with an artificial arm was having trouble walking down the deserted road I happened to be parked on. (I was in front of an auto body shop, about to deal with the dent that a valet at the St. Regis had left at the previous week's wedding. Another story for a rainy day.) Seeing he was in distress, I jumped out of my car, grabbed this stranger by his one arm and told him I'd get him home.

I walked with this gentleman for what seemed like an eternity on a very hot day. He ultimately told me that he was 88-years-old and that he was the former national president of the NRA. I laughed upon hearing this and joked to him that he was lucky he had a good grip on me with his good hand, as I'm not a big fan of the NRA. Diametrically opposed viewpoints aside, we bonded as we alternated between panting and discussing gun control for the next hour.

When I related the story to David, specifically the part part about the man clutching on to me, he said, not missing a beat, "With his cold, dead hand?"

Like I said, with David Colton, you either get the reference or you move along.

I've known David a long time now, since I first arrived in Washington in 1988 as a "loaner" at USA Today. Back then, when Gannett had more money than it knew what to with (you want jumbo shrimp? you should have seen the Christmas parties in those days), young photographers and reporters from all over America would come to Arlington, Virginia for four-month stints at the Big Show. Binghamton, Chillicothe, Jackson and all the other AAA affiliates.

The premise was that we would come from our small-market papers, green and naive, and soak up a bit of the Rosslyn high-life. (In reality, this meant being asked to happy hour at New York, New York, on the mall level, or crabs up the block at the Quarter Deck.)  Refreshed and enlightened to the ways of big newspapers, we'd then return to our respective dailies and impart our wisdom back to the waiting troops. It was the trickle-down theory of journalism.

Unfortunately for the folks running this great program, most of the reporting back went something like this:

"There are gold faucets in Al Neuharth's bathroom!"

"They have catered lunches every day!"

"How come they don't have bean counters telling them to print on smaller paper like we do?"

"I'm not coming back!"

"I quit!"

It was big success, the loaner program was, at fostering great relationships between flagship USA Today and its smaller papers.

On the plus side, all of us loaners had a blast, and people like David were the reason why. There were funny people at the Binghamton Press, where I had come from, sure, but David's humor was on a level I hadn't encountered at that point in my life. All this, and he's one of the greatest Bruce Springsteen fans to boot. What's not to like?

Clearly, Tara has her father's genes. (Along with the equally funny and talented photographer genes of mom, Eileen.) It's surely the explanation for all the laughter that could be heard in Middleburg that day. Tara laughed through her vows, through the photos we did in front of a golden setting sun, and through her father's endless shout outs to the assembled guests ("Who's here from USA Today?!? Anyone here from law enforcement?! Who's done time?").

It was all great fun--seeing a couple so happy, seeing so many people I once worked with, having David introduce me as the only wedding photographer in America with an op-ed in the Sunday Times, and, most of all, listening to the hardest working 1980's cover band around, The Legwarmers, sing songs from those "loaner" days.

As Loverboy once said in "Everbody's Working for the Weekend,"...oh, forget it.

To see a mini gallery of photos from Jed and Tara's Briar Patch bonanza, click here.

Take care,

Matt

p.s Pete Eisler of USA Today assisted in the editing of this piece and demanded that he be credited for this pro bono work.