This last weekend might have been the beginning of the rest of my life. Well maybe that's a bit drastic, but it was my first job as official wedding photographer, something that has been in the works for some time now. My good friends Julien St. Hilaire and Luciana Patiño got married in Luciana's hometown of Junin, a provincial city about 3 hours to the northwest of Buenos Aires. The happy couple had arranged for transportation for Julien's side of the wedding party, he's from Quebec, and for the close friends here in BsAs to ride up altogether in a big shuttle bus. So off we went at 9 am to real gaucho land, something I had been wanting to do ever since I arrived in Argentina.
It's pretty standard here for people to have vacation or weekend property in the countryside, a way for people to get away without going too far. So even though we all hotel reservations in the city of Junin, our first stop was Luciana's family's campo, a full working farm about 20 minutes outside of the city. Apparently her grandfather, who at a young 81 might be the coolest man on the plan
et, and some other family friends were putting together a massive asado for our arrival. I had been to asados before, a lot of them in fact, but there is nothing like going to an authentic Argentine asado where almost everything you are eating comes from the farm. The specialty of the day was lechon, or suckling pig in English. The most amazing pork I've ever eaten in my life. We ate, drank a lot of wine, and played on the farm. Some people rode horses, the rest of us just sat there and basked in the silence of the country. It felt so nice.
The wedding wasn't until the evening on Saturday so between the asado and the main event, we wandered around Junin which to be honest isn't too exciting, but still worth seeing I think. Weddings here are pretty much the same as in the States except there are a couple major differences. For one, there are no bridesmaids or groomsmen. I had some ideas for pictures of both those groups of people, but apparently they don't have them. Also, the bride and groom don't kiss facing the priest, they do it facing the crowd from the podium with the priest at their side. Kind of interesting.
After going to this wedding, I can't wait to go to my next one. The party was incredible and in Argentine fashion went until about 7 am, with even the oldest guests staying awake until the end. They just can't get enough here! I have attached a link to the photos on facebook and will be uploading them to my pbase as well as my new wedding photography site (yet to be named or registered). Now that I have something of a portfolio I can let the wedding biz going! Yeah!!
Enjoy!
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