I live near a very large cemetery, a lovely cemetery. Well maintained, excellent landscaping and gardening staff, etc. On three different occasions recently, I have driven by and noticed a wedding party shooting photos on the front lawn and inside the cemetery itself. :eek:
Is this common?! How common? Wouldn’t it occur to the bride that this is an extremely morbid place to take wedding photos, at least it is to me.
Perhaps, there is nowhere else nearby? Anyplace is better than a cemetery for your wedding photos, in my opinion at least. No matter how beautiful the cemetery is.
If it’s good enough for Buffy and Spike it’s good enough for me.
Seriously, if it’s lovely, well-maintained and excellently landscaped, who cares if it’s a cemetery? Most of the people seeing the pictures are not going to know it’s a cemetery and those that do may or may not care. It’s not hurting anyone and the dead certainly don’t mind. Good for the bridal parties for making alternate use of what is undoubtedly one of the worst wastes of good land, the graveyard.
I have seen wedding parties take the liberty of having their reception group photographed on an unfamiliar next door neighbor’s front lawn (without permission), as their own was too weed strewn at the time. I am no longer shocked by anything.
As to wedding photos with headstones in the background, I’ll leave my thoughts to your imagination. Then again, Charles Addams had his wedding in a graveyard. Of course, the bride wore black. Mind you that it was a pet cemetary, as no graveyard would grant them permission to hold the ceremony there.
Taking the pictures at the cemetary? Amateurs I say!
At my wedding we had the entire ceremony on the steps of a mausoleum.
Although it is “uninhabited”.
The mausoleum was built by the count that owned the nearby manor, at his favourite spot by the lake. He had to acquire permission from the King to be buried there. It was finished a year before he died and he was buried there. A few years later though his evil relatives had him moved to the cemetary.
I think you’ve isolated the problem right there. It’s just your opinion, and frankly, since it isn’t your wedding your opinion doesn’t matter.
I’m very firmly in favor of couples celebrating and recording their marriages as they see fit, within the bounds of law. Clearly, having pictures taken around or within a cemetary works for the couples in question and since they’re not hurting anyone or anything, I don’t see what the big deal is.
I have known one woman who had pictures done in a cemetary. No, she wasn’t a Morticia type. Her father had passed away about six months before she got engaged, and she had some wedding photos done by his grave as well as some done on a lawn near the graves of her grandparents. It was her way of feeling connected to her daddy and her grandparents on her wedding day, and it eased some of the pain of having someone else give her away.
Anything else would have been preferable to her feeling connected to her loved ones and peaceful on her wedding day? Horseshit.
A nearby cemetary is also almost a zoological garden. Flowers and bushes and trees and birds…it’s a very pretty place. On the right day it would make for beautiful pictures.
My sister got married in a gorgeous area of a cemetary last fall. My father walked her down a large set of steps next to a mausoleum, and the officiator stood in front of the babbling brooke that ran through a grassy area that had no headstones or dwellers underneath. It was a beautiful ceremony. She did not wear black nor make it a morbid occassion in any way. The caretakers simply had to put a limit on the number of attendees. Otherwise, they didn’t really care about what we did.
