Jason and Jayson posing before the ceremony
Some time in August, I was approached by my friend Jason: would I be interested in taking photos at his upcoming wedding to long-time boyfriend Jayson? Would I! I said yes as soon as I’d confirmed that I didn’t have the date promised to anyone else.
Jason is an actor, and he and Jayson both have a good sense of the theatrical. In fact, the wedding would take place in a banquet-hall-like space called the Bullitt Cabaret at Seattle’s ACT Theatre. I learned later that our mutual friend Rachel would be the officiant, which is beautiful in its own right: Jason and Rachel and I all worked on a series of shows together, in which Jason played a super-strong superhero called The Cap’n, and Rachel played a fiendishly intelligent villain named Chaos Theory, who thwarted his team at every opportunity. We couldn’t resist calling back to our shared past for one shot.
Chaos Theory is back to wreak more… chaos
As the ceremony proceeded, after we had taken the formal shots on the gorgeous stairs (including shots with the almost hopelessly romantic 5×7 camera — there is nothing like having your photographer disappear under a dark cloth behind the 1910-era wooden camera and calling out “Say Cheese!” before the flashes ignite), a titter rippled through the audience as we realized we were in for more of a show than anyone had reckoned on.
Rachel is well known around town as a puppetteer, and is even running her own puppet business, Vox Fabuli Puppets. There was a suspiciously shaped box at her feet as she brought Jason and Jayson up to the landing where she’d be performing the ceremony. Tittering turned into full laughter (and not a few shocked gasps, I suspect) as she pulled out her new puppet, the Right Honorable Ruth Monster Ginsberg. Chaos indeed. Ruth Monster Ginsberg officiated the whole wedding, although she had to be checked at one point when it became clear that her ABCs of good relationships would have taken up the whole alphabet, if given free reign.
Ruth Monster Ginsberg officiating. She doesn’t see what’s so funny.
The ceremony was endless fun, and indeed turned into a proper show, with acts on stage, singing and dancing, the whole nine yards. We also took advantage of a fantastically baroque chesterfield in the upper balcony to create another photo booth for anyone who wanted to be part of the drama.
Chesterfield + theater people = delicious drama
On top of having a fantastically good time taking pictures at a good friend’s wedding, I was also told yesterday that one or more of my photos from the night may be published in a magazine early next year. More news on that if it becomes real, but even the possibility is pretty exciting.