Grooms in Cornwall and Devon
Grooms Column: Wedding Memes
From T-Rex to Trash the Dress, Nathan Midgley ponders the phenomenon of the matrimonial meme...
From T-Rex to Trash the Dress, Nathan Midgley ponders the phenomenon of the matrimonial meme...
Image: www.jelgerandtanja.com
Mum, dad: I used to be into internet memes. I'm sorry. It was only a few times in my early twenties. But I never inhaled, and....
Ah, it's no good. The truth is I loved internet memes until I was nearly 30. In my defence, it was a job. There'd been a sudden explosion in people making and sharing funny stuff online, and some marketing types thought it sounded exciting and lucrative. They offered me money to understand it, which I thought sounded exciting and potentially lucrative.
Those days are behind me, but memes are bigger than ever. I feel old. A bit stupid, too. Whenever some planet-brained MIT chap explains why the Harlem Shake is interesting I nod along, right up to the point where I have to watch yet another Harlem Shake video. Then the spell breaks, and I start to think it would be more interesting to smash my computer and go for a walk.
If you follow wedding photography, you'll know it has some emerging memes of its own. In 'Wedding Party Fleeing X' the party runs towards the camera screaming, and the snapper pastes in something that scares geeks, like a T-Rex, an AT-AT Walker or a fresh vegetable. It boils down to an expensive version of those stock backgrounds from first-generation camera phones, but at least it gives the party some exercise before dinner.
More widespread is 'Trash The Dress', in which brides fortunate enough to have a gorgeous frock find a violent and decorative way to destroy it. Not that they're angry. You were right to veto the naked horseback idea, and a traditional white wedding was much better. Now if you'll excuse them, they just have to throw paint on this thing and burn it in a frenzy of orgiastic release. Back in two ticks.
Some couples and photographers are taking things a step further, and drafting bona fide internet memes into their shoot. Look out for Planking ushers, Owling bridesmaids, brides Vadering their grooms and entire wedding parties doing the Kamehameha attack. It's not for me - as we've established, those days are behind me, plus I've smashed my computer - but they look like they're having fun.
I'll leave you to look most of it up, but it's worth explaining Kamehameha. It goes like this: one individual pretends to perform an energy attack from the manga cartoon 'Dragon Ball', while everyone else leaps into the air as if caught in the blast wave.
Why is it worth explaining? Because it yielded my favourite wedding/meme crossover photo. There is, out there in the wild, a shot of a Canadian groomsman leaping back so hard his trousers have split in mid-air.
Yes, it's a Kamehameha, and yes, it's an Epic Fail too. That's just box-ticking. In the end - and pay attention, photographers, because this represents years of digital expertise - it's funny because you can see his pants.
Copyright WED magazine 2013
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