Wedding pros who′ve seen it all

When you hear the word wedding, what adjectives come to mind? Solemn, beautiful, moving, joyous. A wedding is all of those things. But there are usually many people working behind the scenes so it will be that way. Here’s a look at what it’s like on their end of the wedding hall

The Photographer

Name: Mendel Meyers

Field: Photographer, Mendel Meyers Studios

Location: Worldwide

Years in the industry: 30+

Mechitzah Mishaps

A family doing a gorgeous upscale wedding at a very high-end hotel chose to use an ice sculpture for the mechitzah. The only problem: Though the hotel often furnished ice sculptures for events and the a/c in the hall was enough to keep them viable for a few hours, no one took into account the extra heat generated by leibedig dancing at a frum wedding. The mechitzah started to melt. By the end of the evening, it looked like the mikveh does on Erev Yom Kippur, and the dancers started to slip and slide… baruch Hashem no one got hurt. Everyone likes to do something that’s never been done before, but there may be unanticipated consequences. I’m in favor of sticking with something tried-and-true.

At a different upscale wedding, the mechitzah was two sheets of Plexiglas with jets of water squirting between them. Kinetic art, if you will. Just like you can’t see a thing when rain is pounding your windshield — the mechitzah was very effective. Until something happened to the water jets. I’m not sure if someone turned off the hose or there was a blockage somewhere, but the water stopped and suddenly there was nothing but a clear glass wall in the middle of the dancing, which came to a pretty sudden halt until someone was able to get the water jets going again.

Say Cheese… and Splash

I once wanted to do a silhouette shot of the chassan and kallah cutting the challah. It comes out so nice. At this particular wedding, they were at their own table sitting between two pillars with a plank across the top with all sorts of flowers and greenery coming down. The flash was on a long metal pole and my assistant needed to slide it behind them from the floor to set up the lighting, but it was a tight space. I could only watch in horror, saying, “Oh, no” as my assistant fell against the pillar and the plank fell. The buckets of water holding all the plants came tumbling down, drenching the chassan and kallah… luckily they had a good sense of humor about it. They were cracking up. Someone brought some towels, they dried off the best they could and said, “The show must go on.”