I'm heartily sick of...

Now you know that I stalk a LOT of photography blogs. A frikkin ton of them, actually. I've stopped using the blogroll on this page, actually, and just use dear old Google Reader - this poor list just wasn't cutting it anymore. I have over 300 blogs in my stalking, er, reading list, so I get through a lot every day. And there is this one thing, this one phrase, that keeps jumping out at me and making me...I don't know...feel all uncomfortable and icky inside. And that is the phrase "magazine-worthy", as applied to someone's wedding.

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What does that even mean? It's worthy of being in a magazine? Obviously, but... WHY? What makes one wedding more worthy than another? Is it the cost? The details? The venue? And who decides that, anyway? What they're basically saying is that most weddings are not ones that people would ever want to look at again, and only a select few are worthy. Wow, thanks for that. I'm so glad to know that my wedding, the celebration of my love and commitment to my husband, the day that it took hundreds of hours and more organisational skills than I knew I possessed to plan and create, is just...well, not quite good enough. I might as well just throw in the towel and elope.

The thing is I don't even WANT my wedding featured in a magazine. I mean, sure, if some prestigious wedding magazine editor called me up and begged me for permission to feature my nuptuals (and paid me for it) it's pretty unlikely I'd say no. But it's not exactly something I aspire to. That said, it still bloody hurts if your beautiful, special day is labelled as "average", which, let's face it, is what NOT calling it "magazine-worthy" amounts to.

So could we stop all this madness of labelling some weddings as "better" than others? There is no "better"! There's just "yours", "mine" and "theirs". Oh sure, tons of money and an idyllic location and the best photographer and floral designers help, but I've seen the most beautiful budget weddings featured on blogs like A Practical Wedding and 2000 Dollar Budget Wedding, and they couldn't be more special, awesome and unique. But are they "magazine-worthy"?

Right there I was about to say "Why do they have to be?" but that's not my point at all! This isn't about rebelling against tradition, and having a (gasp) NON-Magazine-Worthy wedding, so that people will point and say, "Wow, look how avant-garde she is! Her wedding's not magazine-worthy in the least!" NO. It's about the fact that there shouldn't even BE such a phrase. No one's wedding should be judged like that, ranked alongside all the others. Seriously, people? Bigger Picture here. If you loved it and your guests loved it, that makes it worthy of anything in my book. So there.

Rant Over.