Wedding Etiquette, Midwestern manners and what to feed your photographer/vendors

I've been asked this question a lot lately and I thought it might be good fodder for a-late-night-I-cannot-sleep after-too-many-bad-Lifetime-Movies evening. In the wedding checklist I sent a few weeks before the wedding if you are having me shoot for the entire day (8 hours or more) I ask if a meal will be provided. Now...there are many schools of thought on this. This being the Midwest and our predilection for over feeding any one we can at any given moment I've found most of my clients are falling all over themselves to make sure I get a meal. For that, I am most humbly grateful.I really am. I love that you send me your invitations with the cute card that asks what I want for dinner and if I am attending.

I swear to you that the evil Kim wants to put on the card "Sorry, can't make it. PSYCH!" Is that wrong?

But alas, I never do, I check the appropriate option (which for me is always the veggie option if available or the chicken or fish option). I'm gonna come clean here folks.....I don't like beef. Like...at all. Like if you serve me a filet, I cannot even pretend to like it. For me, it's that one food that...well, you know. For you it might be spinach, or rutabaga or liver...you just can't fake it. So when I'm presented with a slab of dead cow, I never ever make a fuss but I do offer it to the nearest beefy guy at the table which makes him my new best friend while feeling crazy guilty for making my clients pay good cash money for something I will not eat. Seriously, I would be happier grazing the leftover chicken nuggets from the kids platters around the room;I've just not figured out a way to make that look good.

Anyway, let me be really really clear. I totally LOVE and appreciate you including me in your meal. I KNOW the cost of a plate is at the major hotels in the area. And that being said, I am NEVER...EVER.... offended if there is an option for a vendor meal. I truly, truly, do NOT CARE. It's not a night out for me, it's simply fuel to keep me going. I am WAY more interested in making compelling images for you than eating a fine meal. If I want a fine meal, I am going to do it in a venue that does not play "Celebration" and "We are Family" in their musical selection in course of an evening. No offense, just sayin'.

So talk to your venue, talk to me and don't be embarrassed to ask questions. I get these questions all the time.

Just wait until your mom asks you if I can make her ass look smaller in the photos, now THAT is embarrassing.

P.S. I totally can make her ass look smaller. I'm a chick, I get it.