Wedding Day

Well, time to head off to my cousin’s wedding. Congratulations Patrick and Clare Anne!

And Dave Barry’s column in this morning’s Daily News has me thankful I am neither a full-time wedding photographer nor the father of a flower girl.

Unfortunately matters only got worse when -- in an unbelievable stroke of bad luck -- we experienced the most stressful thing that can happen at a wedding: wedding photographers. There seemed to be dozens of them, and they had all attended that special wedding-photographer school where they learn how to take a dozen people and organize them into 14 million permutations:

``. . . OK now I want the bride with the bridesmaids. OK now I want the groom with the groomsmen. OK now I want the bride with the groomsmen. OK now I want the mother of the groom with the bride and the bridesmaids whose names contain two or more vowels. OK now I want the father of the bride with the groom and the groomsmen whose blood type is . . .''

Some wedding photographers become so crazed with power that they form gangs and roam the suburbs, breaking into homes and terrorizing the residents by making them pose for days (``. . . OK this time I want to see a BIG SMILE from everybody! Don't make me get out Mr. Cattle Prod again!'')

Anyway, our flower girls had to be in many, many pictures, and if you think it's easy to make 3-year-olds sit still, smile and not mess up their dresses for long periods, then you are either a crack addict or a wedding photographer.