My Middle Name is *not* Grace

So I had an interesting wedding weekend. Really though, all wedding weekends are interesting. But most weddings don't involve injury.

Now, I am not graceful. I am an admitted clutz. I trip over my own two feet at least once a day. And when I'm lugging camera gear, and wearing the shoes I shoot in, that incident rate rises dramatically. But most of the time I just laugh it off as the bride and groom watch in horror as I almost drop a few thousand dollars in camera gear into a creek.

This weekend was different in two ways. First, my moment of clutziness happened during the ceremony. Second, I really hurt myself.

Here's how it all went down:

For most weddings, I spend the ceremony shooting from the choir loft. I get to pull out my super stealth and crazy heavy zoom lens. I love the cool perspective I get from back there and Karl is always sitting up front, so I know he has those shots covered.

For this particular wedding, the stairs to get up to the choir loft were inside the actual sanctuary. So I stayed back with the wedding party, taking shots until everyone had made their way down the aisle, and then I snuck in to go up the stairs. This loft was set up a little different than I am used to. It had stadium seating so to speak, with each row of chairs elevated higher than the other. So I had to be careful to climb down the big steps to get to the ledge where I could prop my camera and get to shooting.

I got several good shots of the hand off, and the opening prayer before deciding to switch positions to get a better shot of the lecturn for the first reading. And at the moment I went to move, I forgot that I was standing on a good sized ledge. Are you seeing where this is going? In the middle of the quiet church, as the reader begins his, "A reading from First Corinthians..." comes a huge crash! I fell backwards, caught my shoe on a step, and rammed my left shoulder, hip and wrist into a nearby wall.

I can't tell you if anyone turned around to look, as I layed there on the ground for a few seconds before catching my breath and getting up. I do know that Karl heard the commotion and wondered if it was me. Happily, my camera gear and bag were on my right side, so none of that got damaged. And after moving my hand around a bit, I concluded nothing was broken. I resumed my post in time to catch the soloist for the responsorial psalm.

Remember that super stealthy zoom lens I was talking about? Bad news. It's also wicked heavy. My wrist was screaming at me by the end of the ceremony! Thankfully, my husband is a rockstar and ran out to the car to grab an icepack out of our cooler. I was able to direct the formal shots with my wrist on ice and maybe scored some sympathy points in the form of cooperative family members.

So yeah, my middle name is definitely not Grace. But nothing is broken, and my bruises are easily covered by sleeves and pants. And best of all, there's no wedding to shoot this weekend so I get some time away from my stealthy zoom.

By July 12th I'll be as good as new and ready for my next self induced injury!