Sneak of Abbie + Nick, Married at Hotel Bethlehem, July 31, 2021

There is this moment after I slip unnoticed out of the neon-lit reception and into the silent vacuum of my car. Each wedding I shoot is very different, but that stark transition is always the same. And no matter how well I know it’s coming, it always rattles me.

Maybe it is the quick shift from the music and the voices to complete silence, like when your eyes are used to the dark and somebody flicks on the light. Maybe it is the way my body and mind move from the Amanda that is bubbly and confident to the one I am now alone with in the sudden silence, face on the steering wheel.

I do this work ultimately because I love love. And I love people’s stories, and the way they look at each other, and the way they laugh and ignite when she takes the first step down the aisle. I love the mamas crying in the bedroom corners and the best friend speeches and the drunk dancing. I love the way we bring people together like that in celebration of two people finding each other in this too-big world because it is certainly a miracle. But every year this moment in the car for me gets harder and harder. I’ve found myself lingering at the reception longer than my contract just to prolong that brutal quiet. And just when I think it is too much, when the vacuum silence feels like for sure it will suffocate me this time, I wake up the next morning to your faces on the screen and I am reminded why.

What I’m trying to say is sometimes I want to run away to the desert with the dogs, wear my $10 1970s wedding dress I found at a thrift store years ago until it’s the color of clay, fall in love only with the sage and the sunlight and the stars. But then there is you. And while there is always this overwhelming, sudden feeling of loneliness when I walk out of your receptions and into my own head, there is also this guttural, relentless hope that drags me out of drowning. And each time the car swallows me up, that goddamned hope always wins.

So, this is my usual long-winded, Amanda Nichols way of saying thank you. To the hundred plus couples I’ve had the chance to witness over these years. To Abbie and Nick, who humbled me yet again Saturday in Bethlehem, with their laughter and their families and their enormous, kind love. These years have really unraveled me, and I am very tired. But more than that I am hopeful, and inspired, and committed to this wild idea that all of us deserve love, and, somehow, somehow, somehow, all of us will find it.

P.S. (Thank you to Colin Hayden for assisting me. I am eternally grateful to find such wonderful, talented humans in this industry.)