There's something to be said for a bride who knows the name of every fabric pattern her caterer offers. Whether it's a badge of honor or a badge of nuttiness, I can't say. On the other hand, there's much to be said about a bride who, without missing a beat (pun intended), can tell you that the name of Spinal Tap's first drummer was Stumpy Joe Peeps.

That bride would be Rebecca Kolko.

To be sure, I connect with all my brides and grooms, mostly thanks to a rigorous screening process involving baseball trivia, useless musical tidbits, and favorite restaurants. We talk about how bad the Nationals are, we discuss the merits of Komi versus Restaurant Eve (I'd go with Komi, provided you just got your tax refund and sold a house recently), and we spend half an hour looking at photos of Alexandra making dopey faces. When I meet with prospective couples the last thing I want to talk about, quite frankly, is how many hours I work on the day of the wedding. Boring.

Rebecca, along with her fiance Josh Friedlander, came in here a while back and we just had a fun old time. I don't even remember what we talked about but I can assure you it wasn't table linens. These guys decided they were going to do something a bit different, splitting their wedding up between a smaller ceremony on a Friday and a kick-ass (I can say that on my own blog) party at the RIAA on Saturday.

The RIAA, of course, stands for the Recording Industry Association of America, and though I used to do a lot of freelance work for them in the 1990's, I had never shot a wedding reception there until now. Josh works at the RIAA, where he slavishly puts the little circle in the middle of each record. (How terrible is it that most people don't even know what a record is anymore?) It's a tough job but at least he gets to do it in a beautiful building (once a famous department store) and surrounded by gold records of just about every famous musician you can think of. Within five minutes of looking around, I saw framed platinum albums from Elvis to U2. Way cool.

Even cooler, the RIAA has some of the funkiest office furniture going, a Stanley Kubrick fantasy if ever there was one. Shooting a photo of Rebecca's parents, sitting perfectly on a set of colored orbs, I could only think of the scene where Alex, in a Clockwork Orange, says to his mum and dad, "Right, I'm leaving now. You won't ever viddy me no more. I'll make me own way. Thank you very much. Let it lie heavy on your consciences."

But I digress.

Bottom line is that Rebecca and Josh wanted a cool, funky party and that's exactly what they ended up having. Alexandra Kovach, formerly the hospitality director at Evermay, helped these guys make all the right moves. Kirsten Michels, my absolute favorite caterer, of Capitol Catering, made sure I tried each of the beautiful appetizers and desserts--you have a future as a Jewish mother, Kirsten--even as I pretended to protest furiously. (I bumped into Kirsten and her family down at the cherry blossoms a few days before and she's always so darned happy.)

Amaretto, one of the best bands out there, got the party started early on. (I owe them a beer for helping me fix a technical glitch with the display of photos on the RIAA's flat-screen TV's.) Everyone was dancing up a storm.

I'm doing this a little backwards tonight and I don't want to slight the Friday end of this shindig, especially given the monsoon that came through Washington in the morning. It was one of those bite-your-lip moments, when you look outside and see water cascading out of your gutters, and think, how are we going to put a positive spin on this one??

Well, as it turned out there was no need for positive spins. Rebecca and Josh weren't stressing--they went out and got a huge red umbrella for the occasion--and were fully prepared to get a bit wet. 

Faithful readers of The Dark Slide will remember a wedding I shot back in September of last year, a day when the remains of a hurricane swept up the coast. On that day, as the groom was putting on his Wellies, preparing for a flood, the oddest thing happened: just as we arrived at the venue, the clouds parted and the sun poked its head out.

Well, that's what happened here. Not only didn't we have any rain, we ended up with some really dramatic skies to accent that red umbrella. I better be careful, or else I'll start believing that every rainy day will stop just in the nick of time.

For a mini gallery of photos from the wedding of Rebecca Kolko and Josh Friedlander, click here.

And if you want to know anything about Nigel Tufnel or The Dude from The Big Lebowski, look Rebecca up.

Matt

p.s. On deck, and I use that term purposefully, the wedding of softball pitcher extraordinaire Stacey Rose and Dan Harris. Check in around Tuesday!

p.p.s. Thanks to Kim Seidl, a San Diego photographer who was here visiting, for great assisting. Kim took the cool capitol/umbrella photo up top.