For the past 6 weekends, I have had a wedding to photograph. They all had their unique aspects, pertaining to the personalities of the brides and grooms, but for the most part, typical weddings. They all had minor bumps, but each day ran smoothly with nothing out of the ordinary affecting the outcome.

Yesterday, however, was a little different. First of all, I know the bride and groom. Not exactly unique, but it makes for a different day from my perspective. For the most part, the day was your typical wedding day. Pre-ceremony jitters, getting everything to fall into place... "where are the flowers?", minor stuff like that. The ceremony was short and sweet, joining together two people who love each other with a love that is obvious to all around them. One of the unique parts of this wedding was the friendship longevity. The officiant, the bride, and the matron of honor have been friends for over 20 years! You don't see that everyday! But even that wasn't what made this wedding stand out for me.

We got done with our pictures, and cocktail hour was in full swing... I prepared for the reception. For the first couple of hours, it was your typical reception as well. After dinner, the DJ was getting the crowd fully involved in the festivities... and the power went out!!

As he scrambled to figure out what had happened, was it his equipment? Or did the breaker from the hotel fail?  Eventually, we found out that an accident outside on the highway had knocked out the power... not only on the road, but throughout the hotel! They had 2 weddings in full reception mode!! But, I think, our reception fared much better. In amongst the guests, was a friend who stepped up to play acoustic guitar and sing. He entertained the guests for over an hour, as we waited to see what the outcome would be. In this time, friends of the groom, tried many things to supply power to the DJ, including running power from their vehicles! This worked temporarily, but would get overloaded and fail as well. And the acoustic music continued..  A server from the wedding even asked if he would entertain the other wedding for awhile, as they weren't dealing with the power outage quite so well!

Finally, it was decided to try and continue with the reception. The cake needed to be cut... as he played, the guests sang "the bride cuts the cake" and in the middle of that, power was restored... one of my favorite parts was when instead of the DJ finishing out the cake cutting with music, the guests just continued to sing!

We did get back to the "typical" reception mode after that, but I will always remember this wedding for the power outage that didn't stop anyone from having a good time!