A month ago I was on the sunny Pacific coast of Mexico, sitting in the shade of a thatched beach umbrella, sipping a strawberry lemonade, with nary a care in the world. For the first time in a long time, I had no way of checking email, no way of sending Instagrams, no way to update Facebook. With roaming charges and horrible, unreliable WiFi at the hotel resort, I’d set my phone on airplane mode and just ignored it most of the time. It was a useless dark brick in Mexico, anyway.
It was really wonderful to unplug. No matter what I tell myself I’ll do in Austin, I am unfortunately tethered to all my devices. It’s one of the reasons why I pushed back against having a smart phone years ago — I was afraid I’d become one of “those people” who pulled it out during lulls in conversations. I think I was a few years late to the iPhone party, only caving and getting one last year. I haven’t gotten to the point where I ignore people when we’re at dinner in order to check my email, but if I’m waiting in a doctor’s office, or am early to a meeting, I surreptitiously (and compulsively) see if anything in the world has changed in the last 5 minutes.
So in Mexico, I realized just how good it felt to unplug!
This was the first wedding that I’d been to in a long while where I was an honored guest. I told my sister, “I will shoot your beach session, but as your maid of honor I’m going to watch you get married.” I took some photos of her getting ready — her dress and shoes and makeup and all that — but during the ceremony I wanted to feel the wind on my cheeks, not a camera body pressed up against my nose. I wanted to blink at the sun. I wanted to listen to their vows instead of thinking about angles.
I wanted to experience the wedding in the present moment, instead of through an LCD screen or a viewfinder. So I walked down the aisle and took a seat (my sister didn’t want anyone else to really stand up there besides the officiant), and watched as she walked down the aisle on our father’s arm.
It was lovely.
Here are a few other photos from the day. I don’t have any from the ceremony, and I’m fine with that.
Cool! Good for you.