It’s a pretty special day for this wedding fairygodmother. Four years ago, we married a charming couple. The bride was attended by her young teenaged daughter, who was behaving like a young teenaged daughter. As a distraction, we offered to do a photo shoot of her alone. Turned out that we all had a lot of fun with that photo shoot – bride, groom, me, Larry, and our model. My job during a photo shoot is to act as stylist, setting up the scene, posing the subject, clearing away anything that doesn’t belong in the photo, and distracting people so that they will relax, smile, laugh, look in a certain direction, or whatever it takes to get the appropriate facial expression. Well, this was a teenaged girl. So, of course she was self-conscious. We all spend about five years being painfully self-conscious and wishing the camera would find our inner all-grown-up and glamorous selves that we try to project. All of us. And this pretty girl was throwing these poses right out of a magazine that just weren’t working for her, because it was clear she was pretending to be someone else…. so we got talking. I told her that she was very pretty (true) and that when she got a little older, she was going to be a knock-out (true) and that when she went to her first prom, with all six of her dates, I wanted a picture. She started laughing, she relaxed, and we got some remarkably beautiful pictures of her. Today, she sent me a prom photo. Gorgeous girl, just one date. Made my whole day.
