In August, I flew to St Louis for a wedding. The groom is the grandson of Al & Grace Wrape from Little Rock. I kind of adopted these two as surrogate parents back when their children were growing up. I was an only child, you see, and they had this large family, so I got like a bunch of brothers and sisters in the deal. It was a sweet deal. Especially the fact that I keep them at a distance and don’t have to live with them 24-7, but visit for feasts, holidays and bridge games when all are on good behavior.

Anyway I ended up marrying practically all their children, except for MaryBeth who got married before I came to Marylake, and Gracie whose husband has a Uncle-in-law or something who’s a priest. But I married all the rest. So when the grandkids started marrying, who does number-one grandson come to when he got married? Me. I mean, I’m like “Marrying Sam” to this family. Well last year when number-one-grandson’s brother decided to marry, he asked Fr. Ralph to do the honors.

Now Ralph was an excellent choice, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no way I can compete with Ralph. He’s a far better man than I. His ego is about 1/5th the size of mine. He beats the socks off me in bridge (as does Fr. Bob Grant who took that inferior quality picture of our community in the post below this). Ralph is a goumet cook, he visits people in their homes, he keeps in touch by phone. His social skills are top of the line. In fact, the only area in which I could compete with Ralph and have a decent chance of winning is in photography. Ralph with luck can find the button to push to take a picture, whereas I spend hours fine tuning a digital images with various areas of light and color until I achieve the ultimate wedding photo.

So folks, here it is. That’s Philip Johnson (his Mom is one of the Wrape girls) with his lovely bride Katie. I’m standing in the back with server Bridget Lee. The setting is this beautiful church on the Jesuit campus of their St Louis University. Now the only thing in the raw image that was perfectly exposed was the bride’s dress. To view any other object in the picture, including the faces of the bride and groom, one would normally have to add enough light to entirely white out that beautiful dress. So kicking both my digital gear and obsessive compulsive disorder into overdrive, I carefully selected about ten separate areas of the raw image for various exposures to achieve what was almost the perfect wedding photo. Almost. Only one item kept it from being perfect. That was Ralph. As main celebrant, he was positioned between the bride and groom. His face was half hidden behind the groom’s face and took attention away from the groom. So through my digital magic, I eliminated Ralph’s face. You can see only a trace of his vestment between the bride’s veil and the groom’s tux. (That trace was needed to outline the groom’s shoulder). Now I was on the sideline of this scene, somewhat up there in the bleachers of the sanctuary, but with the digital elimination of Ralph, it appears I’m actually presiding over this lovely wedding. And so there you have it, folks: the perfect wedding photo.