Adam Streisfeld and Jen Thompson like to kiss each other on the nose a lot.

That may be a weird way to start this entry, but as I sat down to write today, without a moment's hesitation that's what popped into my brain. And it's probably a good thing, since, as we know, first impressions are always right. And if one were forced to distill two people down to first impressions, I would have to say that Adam and Jen are really silly together. Wonderfully, goofily, happily, playfully silly together. As Ira Gershwin once wrote, "Who could ask for anything more?"

I noticed this about these guys the moment I met with Jen. Our first conversation centered around barbecue. Again, not your average place to start, but who wants average, right? Somehow were were discussing the best places to get barbecue around here (growing up on Long Island, where the options are pizza, pizza and more pizza, we didn't get much pulled pork or chicken) and Jen mentioned a place called Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que that was a favorite of her fiance. That was it. I knew I'd shoot her wedding.

Why, you ask? Because Pierce's isn't on the beaten path, and only true barbecue lovers would go out of their way to get there. Pierce's Bar-B-Que is located a couple of miles off of I-64, not far from Williamsburg, Virginia. A couple of miles means that it's not E-Z on, E-Z off. There are plenty of those places, mind you, your McDonalds and other assorted fast food options, but when you're driving up from the Outer Banks or wherever, you want good food. And so people in the know (us) always make the extra effort to go to Pierce's, even if the sign is tiny and we always forget the way. Sure, the line is out the door and people hover on top of you waiting for empty seats. But to me, that's the sign of a place worth waiting for.

See? I'm a sucker. Talk to me about good food and we're friends for life

I'm also a sucker for fun people, as I think I made abundantly clear with the last couple of posts about Stacey and Dan and Rebecca and Josh. When I shot Adam and Jen's engagement photo, I think I actually tried for three minutes to take a quasi-formal photo of them. Things deteriorated from there and I think Adam ended up carrying Jen around the studio on his back. You can't force round pegs into square holes and we gave up pretty quickly on the normal thing. You have to let your clients be themselves.

And so, on the day of their wedding, when the nose kissing thing started, I didn't bat an eye. It's really great to see people that happy. And even better, to see people who feel completely relaxed in their own skin. (My daughter Alexandra kisses me on the nose exclusively. Getting anything else out of her is a waste of time, unless there's a promise of Carvel.)

Adam and Jen got married at the Carnegie Institute in Dupont Circle. There aren't too many places I haven't shot around this area but the Carnegie was new territory for me. It's spectacular. With its impressive columned facade and breathtaking rotunda, it's just an ideal place for a ceremony. (Some folks bumped into Ralph Nader, who has an office here, though I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I'd like to give him a piece of my mind but that's a story for another day.)

Jen looked gorgeous as her long veil kept blowing away on her. And Adam got to wear the same yarmulke he wore at his bar mitzvah. Seeing each other for the first time, Adam did a little silly dance, and later, as his parents escorted him down the aisle, he made a motion like he was going to flee the joint. And even later, as they were being announced for the first time as husband and wife, Adam and Jen ran into the room so fast they might have given Olympic 100m champ Usain Bolt some competition. These guys just exude fun energy.

Their reception continued the theme. Bypassing the norm, Adam and Jen opted for stations that featured things like pad thai in little cartons and mashed potatoes with toppings. (The sweet potato option was amazing.) In fact, the more I think it, all you really need to know is that Jen and Adam didn't go with a Gershwin or Cole Porter staple for their first dance. Nope. They chose the blues classic Grits Ain't Groceries. How cool is that?

If, by the way, you're wondering what any of this has to do with the title of this post, Tubular Bells (better known as the theme to The Exorcist), I'll tell you. A few days ago, I got an email from Jen assuring me that she had gotten the message (she thought) of the last couple of entries: that brides will email me from their honeymoon in hopes of stealing a peak at some of their pictures. This was NOT the intent of her email, Jen swears. She simply wanted to tell me about the myriad ways one can be serenaded on one's honeymooon by a steel drum band. Here's her list:

- The theme from "Titanic," by Celine Dion
- "Chariots of Fire"
- "I Will Always Love You," by Whitney Houston
- "I Saw the Sign," by Ace of Base
- The theme from the "Exorcist."

Jen continued, "For whatever reason, the resort always played the last song at breakfast. Hearing that particular tune just as you were sitting down to a nice omelet was rather ominous, particularly as the resort was populated by rapacious birds that would spear food right off your plate if you weren't cautious. I have attached a picture of one of these birds, attempting to rob the sugar bowl; and also of us at the top of St. Lucia's second-highest mountain, being big dorks. I can't imagine you're surprised."

No, Jen, not in the least!

To see a mini-gallery of pictures from Adam and Jen's wedding, click here.

Matt

p.s. a big thanks to my old UPI buddy Cliff Owen, who assisted me on this wedding, and made some beautiful overhead pictures.

You have to be careful with this blogging stuff.

If you write about one couple who got married on a Saturday, then it goes without saying that a certain couple who got married a day later, on a Sunday, is going to be mighty anxious to get a sneak peek at their pictures as well. Even though we might be furiously downloading gigabyte after gigabyte of files behind the scenes, the client only sees what shows up on the web site and blog. And their pictures are either there or they aren't.

In this case, it's a good thing that Stacey Rose is so darned polite. She might be one of the toughest softball pitchers in the region but Stacey thankfully doesn't have a pushy bone in her body. When I e-mailed her last week to tell her we were on the case, she responded humorously, "I cannot confirm or deny whether This One Goes to Eleven (the title of our previous blog post) is now burned into my monitor or that my "refresh" button is begging for mercy.)

Well, give that refresh button a rest, Stacey.

Stacey married Dan Harris a couple weeks ago on a beautiful day, right smack in the middle of the Cherry Blossom Festival here in the nation's capital. Stacey's an attorney and Dan's a doctor, in his last month of residency at Georgetown, and you can never go wrong with that pairing, right? (Apparently a passenger fell ill on their flight to French Polynesia and as a thank you for Dan's assistance, the airline upgraded the newlyweds to first class on the return trip.)

Good things happen to good people.

Dan and Stacey's wedding began with a service at one of my favorite places, the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington. Built in 1906, the synagogue was the first home to what is now Adas Israel Congregation off of Connecticut Ave. and Porter Streets. During the early 1940's it became clear that a new, larger space was needed, and the building at Sixth and I was sold to Turner Memorial A.M.E., where it served as a church until 2002. In that year, the building was purchased by a team of developers that included Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin and restored to its original mission. Without a doubt, Sixth and I is the most beautiful synagogue in Washington.

After the service, it was time for some wedding party pictures. Now I've shot a lot of cherry blossom photos in my twenty-one years in Washington and if there's one major ground rule, it's this (stolen from Robert De Niro in the film Brazil): Travel light, get in, get out. Nothing against the one million people who gathered up their kids and their picnic baskets and headed out to snap some photos of the Japanese wonders on the morning of Stacey and Dan's wedding, but sitting in a mile-long traffic jam around the Tidal Basin ain't my idea of fun.

Most of the time I'm shooting cherry blossoms, it's 6:45 in the morning and most folks are just waking up. The light is nice and you can actually find a parking spot. (Though the National Park Service eliminates a few more each year, just to ensure their status as a bureaucracy.) But you can't exactly do that with a wedding party, unless you want a lot of evil eyes cast in your general direction by bridesmaids and groomsmen. But Dan and Stacey, utilizing just the skills you hope to find in a doctor and an attorney, mapped out a double-secret probation route that would make Jack Bauer smile. And when they thought they had it down right, they drove it again and again, stopwatches in hand.

I know my way around here (I drive like a true New Yorker) but I have to hand it to them. Their research paid off and we were in and out in record time, despite the throngs. (Did I mention that there were a million people on the Mall that Sunday?) And here's the best part: My favorite picture of Stacey and Dan from the whole excursion doesn't have single cherry blossom in it. Oh, we have plenty of those, don't get me wrong. But I have to say that I really love this photograph of the two of them just sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, surrounded by hundreds of other people out enjoying the fantastic scenery.

I guess it illustrates that you can never pre-judge a scene. Or a person, for that matter. I would have never guessed that Stacey is as committed and talented an athlete as she is. And she's a pitcher at that, a position near and dear to my heart. As I wrote in my New York Times op-ed last fall, Tom Seaver, my childhood hero, not only struck out 19 players in a game, but he fanned the last ten batters in a row to end the game. In an age when most pitchers don't get past the 6th inning, good or bad, that is a mind-blowing statistic. (Fellow Hall-of-Famer Steve Carlton, of the Phillies, once struck out 19 and lost the game!)

Stacey will appreciate that. She was captain of the Furman University softball team from 1995 to 1998, and then played a season at Longwood University. She still holds the Virginia Division II record for most strikeouts in a game at 15. (Yes, Stacey, I Googled!)

Even after graduation, Stacey played for the University of Virginia club team while attending law school. "I was 26 and the rest of the girls were, like, 19. They called me grandma," she jokes. And there's still more: Stacey received an invitation to try out for the Israeli Olympic softball team.

"I always dreamed of playing in the Olympics when I was a girl," she told me. "Getting an invitation showed that it wasn't just a pipe dream."

Though she's now a successful attorney, Stacey still pitches in the Fairfax County Women's Fastpitch League. I might have to bring Alexandra to watch her someday. We just bought her a glove and she could use a better teacher than yours truly.

I'll close with an e-mail I just received from Stacey, who wanted to make sure I knew that Dan will be working as a doctor at a clinic for the underserved when he finishes his residency: "Dan jokes that he was surprised that I continued to date him after we went to the batting cages at Upton Hill Regional Park on our third date and I shellacked him in a hitting contest. He will proudly tell you that he did beat me at putt-putt on that same evening, although the scorecard, which I still have, shows it was a tie."

To view a mini gallery of pictures from the wedding of Stacey Rose and Daniel Harris, click here.

Take care,

Matt

p.s. Stay tuned here for a slight re-design of The Dark Slide, one that will allow us to run bigger horizontal pictures. I'll keep you posted.

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.

Before I post about the two great weddings I photographed recently, shot during the height of cherry blossom season, I thought I'd take a quick second for a shameless plug.

A certain bride named Rebecca might think that I'm stalling for time and she's probably right. But given that this particular bride's brand spanking new husband happens to work at the Recording Industry Association of America, maybe some good can come out of making her wait.

(They're coming, Rebecca, I promise!)

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting a young woman named Tiffany Thompson. An accomplished singer-songwriter, Tiffany needed some photos for a demo CD she was putting together.

I've done a few of these projects in my day. Some are polished, some, well, not so polished. Thankfully, Tiffany falls into the former and not latter category.

What immediately set Tiffany apart from the others was how focused and professional she is. With only the help of her brother, Tiffany wrote the songs, recorded the tracks, created a cool album design and website, and even shot a music video down on the Mall. I wish I was that focused when I was her age.

And, most importantly, it all sounds great, even to an old fogey like me. While American Idol is serving up the same lame-o karakoke each week ("It's Neil Sedaka night, where we'll force all our young performers to sing songs their moms and dads will love!"), there are still scores of talented musicians trying to make a name for themselves the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, you can hear more of Tiffany's music at www.tiffanythompsonmusic.com. As a firm believer in supporting young artists, I say let's tune out of Idol mode for a sec (my sister Jennifer just gasped) and help spread the word about a deserving new artist.

Matt

Usually it's the bride who emails first.

It always happens, generally on the third or fourth day day of the honeymoon, just as I'm beginning the process of downloading gig after gig of CF cards, that I get a very perky email from a recently married bride. In between sips of her mojito, as she presumably looks out a hotel window on a Caribbean beach or a Parisian cafe, she'll type a quick email to say thanks. And, more to the point, to ask, ever so politely, if there's any way she can get a sneak peek at some pictures from the wedding.

That's how this blog came into being, really. We've always known that you guys are anxious to see some pictures and thought it would be good to head these kind of requests off at the pass.

But this time it was mom who beat everyone to the punch.

If there's one thing you should know about Emily Cohen, who married Jeff Nestler last weekend in a beautiful ceremony at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, it's that she is the daughter of Dee Cohen. And conversely, anyone who knows Dee knows that she's Emily's mom. They're a tag team of laughter, energy, and zany character, and it's a pleasure to be around them both at the same time. They act more like sisters, even when it comes to smothering Elvis, Jeff and Emily's adorable dog, with love.

So when an email popped into my box last night bearing the Cohen name, I assumed it was Emily saying hi from Brazil. But it was from Dee:

Matt:

What a difference a week makes. I can’t believe that one week ago we were still in wedding mode. Everything is starting to be a big blur. I want to thank you for being at Emily and Jeff’s wedding and let you know ahead of time that we are so excited to see the photos.

You are now our one chance to remember that we were actually there. After seeing the fabulous engagement photos (Elvis and all) I know we will be thrilled when we can finally take a look at what actually was on March 21.

People told me ahead of time that the night would be a memory and a vague one at that, but until you are actually there you can’t imagine that you will not remember all. What I do remember is that we had an amazing time and the party reviews were all A++. As soon as you have some photos that you can email me, please do…..the mother of the bride is anxiously awaiting.

I like emails like that.

Who wouldn't want clients who appreciate the importance of photography, not to mention ones who appreciate the effort we put in as photographers.

(It's kind of like the email queries I receive from prospective brides. Some are gushing, excited and hopeful. Others--not so many, thankfully--come as form letters, sometimes with other photographers are even cc'ed! Which one would you be more excited about?!)

Jeff and Emily had a gorgeous Spring day for a wedding here in the nation's capital. They got ready at the Hotel Monaco, always a fantasy for a photographer, with all that color everywhere, and we were able to take advantage of the warm weather for some fun pictures. I'm not even sure whose idea this was, but at one point during the getting ready festivities the doorbell rang and the largest red balloon I've ever seen popped into the room. Someone gets a gold star 'cause this thing was killer.

In fact, it might have been the coolest accessory for a wedding I've seen in a while, had Emily not then pulled the neatest veil-blusher-thingy (very technical term, speaking as a guy) out of a hat box. It was hip, it was retro, it was funky. And boy did it glow when Emily was escorted down the aisle by her mom and dad.

After that, as Dee said, things were a blur. Jodi Moraru and Jackie Gang made the museum look beautiful, DJ Chris Laich had people dancing from hello (and until goodbye), and Joel Wolke of Occasions Caterers once again outdid himself with some of the coolest Chinese appetizers (complete with mini take-out box) I've seen. (I see Joel so often at weddings I'm sometimes disoriented when he's not there.) And my buddy Kim Giammaria once again showed why she's the best makeup artist in town.

It was all a blast and I won't babble on any longer. Best wishes to the Cohen family, the Nestler family and a big thanks to Emily and Jeff for having me. As for Dee's request, that's an easy one:

To view a mini gallery of some pictures from Emily and Jeff's wedding, click here.

Best,

Matt