Last month I shot maedori (pre-wedding photos) for my son’s upcoming wedding. His bride-to-be is from Akita. Her parents there were unable to come down to join us for the shooting.
There was a time when I thought it would be cool to be the father of the bride. One day, you entrust another man with the daughter that you raised with so much love. I had thought it would be great to experience such a bittersweet moment.
But when I went to Akita to meet my soon to be daughter-in-law’s parents and saw the look in her father’s eyes as he gazed upon her, my heart felt like it had exploded. It screamed at me, “There’s no way you could bear being the father of the bride!” I was struck with the sense that all fathers who give their daughters’ hand in marriage must feel a mix of tremendous joy and desolation at the same time.
On the day of the photo shoot while I looked through the camera’s viewfinder, I shot each photo with the thought of delivering the best pictures I could take to the parents of the bride. A day will come when the newlyweds become parents themselves and share the photographs with their children. It will be at that moment that they truly come to understand how their parents felt.