Clothing for Mousehat provided by Icarus of West End

I haven't been to church in ages, and my wardrobe reflects that.

So there was a quandry about what to wear for the baptism.

~

Warning: interminably long post ahead.

If you *must* continue... then go away. Get a coffee. Come back. And make yourself comfortable.

I'm not kidding.

~

Boyfriend was photographing the christening as a favour to his cousin whose newborn daughter was the star of the show; I was happily tagging along as auxilliary shutter~bug.

Though I enjoy photography immensely, I am not in any way a professional. So I was apprehensive about being there.

Normally I would bow out of a situation where my discomfort level is high ~ but I so much wanted to be there taking pictures that I was determined to go through with it.

To ease my discomfort, I wanted to blend into the background. The right outfit was essential: it would be my cloak of invisibility/chameleon skin/psychological armour/security blanket.

So I *had* to find something non-descript & appropriate to wear in church.

Now, in my tradition, one does not wear black to a baptism. One does not reveal shoulders, knees, or cleavage of any kind in church. One does not wear flashy clothing, and one definitely does not wear anything resembling evening wear. But heaven forfend one should wear anything scruffy.

My entire wardrobe would have been completely unacceptable.

I dragged Boyfriend with me to go shopping. Boyfriend has excellent taste, and a good eye for flattering clothing with classic and lasting appeal.

All I wanted was a dress. That was all I wanted.

Boyfriend tactfully tried to suggest a two piece ensemble, but I was stubborn.

Two malls I dragged the poor dear patient man through, from the high-end retail outlets to the bargain basements. There was not a single dress to be found in my age range that could qualify as church wear.

Plenty of summery spaghetti~strap dresses, shimmery cocktail dresses, gaily-patterned peasant dresses, boldy-coloured look-at-me dresses, but nothing one could wear into church without being awarded a scarlet letter.

Exasperated, we'd show each other the offenders & ask: Church, yes/no?

Florid~flowery~flimsy~flowy~frilly thang: Church?

1980's~revival pale~khaki diagonally~structured creation with mesh/grommets/zippers/shoelacing & side~train: Church?

Tube~top floor~length black~lace number: Church! I said. ~Yes, Boyfriend said, but Church of What?

Why did it surprise me to discover that church isn't uppermost in the minds of fashion designers and executive stock purchasers? I could have saved us a few hours, two frayed tempers and four sore feet.

So I wore one of the suits I have for the office. Hemline's above the knee, but it's oyster~coloured & fairly respectable.

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We got to church early and found that appointments for christenings are tightly booked. They had stacked up babies for baptism like air traffic controllers stack planes for landing.

There was a group ahead and a group after our group, and it took a few minutes to sort out whose people were whose.

And nearly everybody's in black. Tasteful black, tacky black, spare black, spangley black.

They're your relatives, I hissed, feeling like twat in oyster, you should have known what they would wear.

He shrugged. In addition to allowing me to drag him through two malls the day before, he'd also voluntarily gone out of his way that morning to pick me up two pairs of nylons. He knew he'd already held up his end.

{Later he was to claim that this was not "traditional black" i.e., what is worn to church by spinsters & widows, but "transitional black" i.e., what is worn to church when going somewhere fancy afterwards; neither of these are in the same class as "normal black" i.e., what I have in my wardrobe, so I still would have felt out of place.}

So during the baptism before ours, we surreptitiously nodded towards offenders, whispering to each other: Church?

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Stupidity is its own reward.

It wasn't until just before our baptism began that I realized a little forethought, a little planning, a little attention would have gone a long way toward making me feel more secure. A little black dress only goes so far.

First of all, the ceremony was unfamiliar to me.

In my tradition, christening is simple sacrement. In Boyfriend's tradition, christening is a stage~managed event involving costume~changes, promenading, hoisting on high of babies and other venerated objects, floor~spitting, holy~book~kissing, dunking, oiling and a hair~cut.

If you're trying to document the event for posterity, there are a lot of important points to cover. The baptism before ours had provided a wonderful opportunity to take notes. And I blew it. I spent it looking at what everybody else was wearing. And now I was going to have to wing it as it went along.

Secondly, I had opted to use a camera that was unfamiliar to me.

It was a professional~quality digital {*drool*} belonging to Boyfriend which he originally planned to use as a subsidiary camera; at the last minute he'd decided to leave it behind, so I asked if I might take it in place of my regular digital. He obligingly set it on Idiot~Proof, and off we went.

But even set on Idiot~Proof, a professional~quality digital is more complicated and sensitive than a normal digital. If you're trying to catch moments as they happen ~ moments that pass only once and will never happen again ~ then you ought to know the capabilities of your camera inside out. And now I was going to have to learn on the fly.

Thirdly, behaving and thinking as a professional photographer was unfamiliar to me.

I didn't dare tell people to look at me and smile please, or, can you stand not there but over there please, or, step aside please, or, can you move that please. At what point is snapping a picture desireable, and when is it being intrusive? I was suddenly painfully aware just how much my normal photography depends on still life or unsuspecting participants.

Classic example: At the reception, the parents and baby posed for pictures in front of the pink&white baptismal cake. By that time the sun was very low in the sky, and it cut a hot spot across their faces and the white frosting. Five minutes after we'd finished taking pictures, the sun had sunk past the buildings and left us bathed in diffuse golden glow of nascent twilight. I could've kicked myself.

If I'd just had the brains to think to wait five minutes, and the balls to tell the frazzled parents to wait five minutes, we'd've all had some damn nice pictures.

That one goes in the chalk~it~up~to~experience box, along with the sun~melted wax & salt~water~soaked feathers.

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I actually had a private fit of nerves akin to stage fright before the event began.

Boyfriend said, Just keep snapping pictures.

I think I took about 240. I think, when we looked at them afterwards, that about five of them were good.

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About halfway through the service it occurred to me that I hadn't seen boyfriend changing rolls of film.

Nightmares have moments like these; wild irrational moments when it suddenly clicks that you're up the creek without so much as a deflated waterwing, because the jampot is on the floor and therefore they're going to confiscate your house and send you to Peru in a paper airplane made out of a calendar which has dates circled on it for appointments that you've missed and now your mother hates you so you'll never get out of Peru because she's the only one who would've helped you get out and now you're screwed because you can't do anything about it and yet everyone's looking at you like you're still expected to fix it. And then you find you're onstage and can't remember your lines.

This illogical and terrifying thought seized me: somehow he was unable to change film, and the responsibility for documenting this once~in~a~lifetime never~to~be~repeated event to the satisfaction of first~time parents rested solely on me.

erg...

whimper, curl up in a ball

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I asked him about it later; he said yes, he did change film during the ceremony, and yes, he missed an opportunity; but when we downloaded the digital at home, it turned out I'd captured the shot.

score...

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Technically, I had no official responsibilities other than as back~up camera to someone who was good enough at his job that he didn't really require back~up.

But if I had to do this again, I would:

> ask to visit the church at least a week before, so as to to makes notes on the layout, the lighting, and the progession of events in the sacrement.

> ask to visit with the parents so as to discuss their expectations. What specific shots they might want of the service and the family? When are photographs permissible and not permissible?

> ask to borrow the camera so as to understand what it will & won't do.

~

And I would wear black.

~

& } > ~ * ~ < { &

Posted by edgar at May 5, 2003 09:29 AM