50 Days 'Til 50 Day 26--Wedding Daze

50 Days 'Til 50Day 26Wedding Dazeeditor’s note: This writing is by no means to bash any or all brides both past and present. It is my first hand account of all things bridal from my vantage point as a hair and makeup artist and all the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the insane. Again, the Today Show had one of its riveting stories this morning. This new trend in weddings to either purchase or rent a drone that has a camera attached to it and use it during the ceremonies to produce this dizzying footage that I guess even the most noted and skilled photographers now cannot produce. The newsman was in a building in Miami where I have worked on many weddings. I first noticed how loud this drone was. You could barely hear the reporter reciting his story as this giant space age insect thing whirred around his head. It sounded like a truck was circling the lobby in this landmark building. “This can’t be good” I said to myself.  My next thoughts were these. “How long will it take before a drone whacks a bride in the head trying to capture that perfect “I do” moment?” Or, “ how long before one gets caught in her veil lifting her off her Louboutin’s and into the air swirling around like a bridal cyclone above her guests below?” I’m really convinced this can’t be good as I'm now having flashbacks of a recent Tom Cruise movie in which drones zoom right up to your face and after a quick proper scan of your body and decide if you were good or evil . If they don’t like you, in a flash you are reduced to a pile of dust. Ok, now I'm really really convinced, “this is NOT a good idea.”When I entered the beauty industry I had no idea where my path would lead me. I had even less of an idea about doing hair and makeup for weddings. I would think that if I was called upon to help my girlfriends with their hair for their weddings it would be a sort of casual drive by hair styling involving lots of wine and lots of Aqua Net. I had no idea I would be lured into the world of weddings nor did I have any idea how much of a business it was becoming and how lucrative it would turn out to be. I had attended a wedding of a high school classmate shortly after we graduated, when I was still in beauty school and it was a lovely ceremony. This would be the last time for years to come that I would attend a wedding as a guest.My first big wedding I was hired to work on will forever be seared into my brain. It was a big one. The bride’s family was high up on the political ladder in Miami and I knew this was going to be no shotgun wedding celebration. One of the big old deco hotels on Miami Beach would serve as the backdrop for the ceremony as well as the reception. As with many of these older hotels that showcased musical groups of those eras gone by, many of them had theaters and stages inside the hotels. Back in its heyday you’d have Judy Garland singing at one hotel and the Beatles only blocks away performing at another. It had to be an amazing time there. These theaters were not huge like the Nokia’s of today but were adequate to hold a good amount of people; also the thought of this brides  wedding planner when she convinced this bride that the stage would be a great venue for the wedding and then the after party would move into one of the grand reception halls afterwards. I have learned over the years that wedding planners are actually close to God. When I bitch and moan about how tired I am after working 6 or 7 hours, they have been with these girls since the inception. Working tirelessly through what to eat, scouting locations, what flowers will flatter the brides eyes the most, and mostly playing big Momma to Mothers of the brides and all the bridesmaids and a stray groom here and there. This is not a blog about the phenomenon of the Bridezilla for its been done a million times already.  Just for the recore I have witnessed it first hand over and over again but this is not about that.  It’s such an emotionally charged event in these peoples' lives it’s almost impossible not to spew every one of your emotions all over anyone who is within shot distance.So the stage was set, literally. After the curtains opened to reveal a “Garden of Eden” theme it was agreed upon that the bride would be lowered from the ceiling on a swing and walk to the front of the stage to greet her “Adam”. Remember this was a working stage with catwalks, pulleys, scaffolding, ropes, etc all stored above the stage and in this wedding planners greatest thinking she somehow got the bride to actually scale a small ladder up into the eves of the stage, in her bridal gown, and wait to be lowered by stage hands that looked as if they should be working the local county fair rather than at this high profile wedding. As this was before cell phones and all the fancy ear buds and microphones the wedding teams use nowadays, to run without a hitch, it had to be done with the utmost in timing, counted out by the music, and a lot of hand gestures from the ceiling person to the floor person 20 feet below. I just had to pray that her hair wouldn’t get tangled up in the ropes of the swing. So the music started up, the curtains opened, and the bubble machine started blowing its little gems across the stage. I guess the ceiling person didn’t see the floor person flailing from below to not drop the swing. The swing slowly creaked down from the ceiling to the gasps of the audience. Her dress billowed up almost to her face from all the layers of tuille but she was happy, if not a bit scared from the height. The swing started to rock to and fro in a slow rhythmic stance to the music. Helped by her wedding party once she reached the floor, the choreography was supposed to be they would help her off the swing and walk her to the center stage to join her groom. In a surreal moment and after her bridesmaids whispered a few things in her ear it all became apparent what had happened.He never showed up.Left at the swing.  As the sad swing made its slow ascent back up into the rafters I didn't think I would ever be the same again. She went on to marry many more times over the years and hopefully stayed clear of any more swings.Ironically years later, I was back at the same hotel. You find that a lot in weddings. There are those half dozen places that everyone must use for their fairytales to play out. By now this hotel had received a 40 million dollar facelift and the stage had been removed. Thank God, I thought when I entered the hotel flashing back to that memorable night on the swing. This family, the Goldfarb’s were amazing. They had more money then I will probably ever see in my lifetime and they planned to show it off to everyone. As the father of the bride whispered in my ear when I saw the white horses (in the hotel), the 10 foot tall ice sculptures, and more food than I’ve ever seen on any cafeteria line I’ve ever stood in; he leaned over and said to me “Not bad for 100 thousand, huh?” Oy veh was all that came to mind. But heck, if you got it, why not go big. The Mother of the bride was fluttering around the room dragging the wedding planner over the coals with each breathing moment. When the planner was asked if her team had located 250 pashmina wraps for all the women guests I almost pooped my pants. Miami was going to be cool that night, a freezing 69 degrees and the brides Mother not wanting any of her guests to be cold sent the planner and her entourage out to all the retail stores in Miami and Miami Beach and actually found 250 of the coveted cashmere throws, all in black. Each woman was to be handed one as she walked onto the red carpet that runwayed from the hotel to the sandy beach at the oceans edge. God forbid the women would have to walk the sand in their heels. The waterfront was beautiful. The chuppah was amazing, red and white flowers as far as you could see and the perfect canopy for the soon to be wed couple. I was locked in the room with the bride so I had very little contact with the Mother as she was running around for her life to make sure everything was perfect. At the close of the wedding cages of live white doves were also to be released as the sun set over the horizon behind the chuppah. It was a gorgeous sight to be sure. If anyone has experienced any length of time in South Florida we all have witnessed these freak hurricane strength storms that blow in late afternoon, do their business, and are gone in 60 seconds. High up in the hotel we could see the black clouds moving closer and I swear for a brief second I could hear her Mother screaming, from 30 floors below. It what can only be described as a scene from an Irwin Allen movie, we all ran out to the rooms balcony to see the chuppah scooped up in the winds and carried up and over the hotel, never to be seen again. The waves washed up onto the shore to cover all the red carpet with seaweed and sand. The doves’ containers rolled on their sides releasing all the caged birds, in which they must have followed the chuupah as they were never seen or heard from again either. The guests chairs were floating in the water and it looked like a bizarre game of bobbing for apples from our vantage point. And then, we all saw her. The Mother was in the ocean in her 25 thousand dollar Armani Prive gown pulling chairs out of the ocean as if rescuing passengers from a shipwreck. She was soaked from head to toe, her hairpiece floating away behind her. She looked up at the bride’s room with only a bird feather in her hand screaming up to us, "the chuppah blew away, the chuppah blew away." I now thought I had seen it all.I’ve lost count on how many weddings I’ve worked on but know it has to be in the hundreds. I’ve witnessed and participated in things you can’t even imagine. The bride that took a few to many xanax in the room we were getting ready and got so relaxed and tired she announced to the room of her bridesmaids that she would be taking a bath. The bathtub sat in the middle of the suite as she filled the tub and sat there for an hour, completely nude, in front of us all, with her fresh hair and makeup not even touched by the splashing water. We had to keep checking her pulse to make sure she didn’t slip under the water. I had another bride who was so nervous compounded with this Tourette like tick where she would jerk her face for no apparent reason. Of course I was curling her hair during one of those jerks and the curling iron smacked her right on her cheek leaving a 3-inch burn mark down the side of her face. Try and cover that with makeup. I’ve seen more boobs and asses than any gay man should probably have seen but I was always deemed safe in their rooms. I would joke with these girls that I was the last man that would ever see them naked again while they were single. I’ve had to glue rhinestones onto these boobs in addition to their groin area so the groom would see her sparkle in the bedroom that night. I'm glad this trend of Va-jazzling was short lived. I lifted huge bridal gowns up and over my brides heads and guided them backwards into the powder rooms, navigating their bums to the toilet as they had forgotten to pee prior to being strapped into the dress. Ripped dresses, broken heels, crying brides, crying grooms, crying children, crying Mothers…Isn't this supposed to be a happy time?  I think now, I’ve seen it all.At the end of the day however the bride and groom or nowadays the bride and bride and groom and groom do get married. It may not be how they thought it would be but it does happen. They get union-ed, joined, remarried, divorced and married again but mostly they get married regardless of Mother Nature, Mothers of the brides, and Mother-in-laws. The love is professed and the sanctity takes place for all to witness. I’ve hinted to my partner many times of what he thinks of marriage. Hint Hint.  He says without missing a beat, “Hell no!” Alas, I’ll always be a bridesmaid.....Sigh.Now, I want to go price and research those drones. I think maybe it could be my newest money making venture.jf