He was late.
That was our introduction to Vidal.
My wife, who was not yet my wife, myself, my Aunt Ev and Uncle Jim had been waiting on the sailboat on which we were to be married for about 15 minutes.
With us on the boat was Captain Bill, the owner of the boat, who was to marry us.
Now, normally when you’re waiting for someone, 15 minutes is not a big deal. But when you’re a female person waiting to get married 15 minutes is a huge deal.
You know how they say for a dog one year equals seven years? Well, that’s sort of the way it was for my wife while we were waiting for Vidal.
“Uh, Mike,” some of you may be asking. “Did you really mean to compare your wife, waiting to get married to you, to a dog?”
To some of you thinking that all I can say is, “No. No, I did not. “
So, forget what I said about the whole one year equals seven years to a dog.
Instead, let’s say my wife was getting a bit anxious waiting for Vidal.
Finally, after a few more minutes, a young dark-haired guy strolled down the dock towards our boat.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he said. “The power went off and I couldn’t get my car out of the garage.”
Even though my wife and I had only been in Key West for a short time we both thought, “OK, that makes sense.”
Back then, the power was always going off in Key West.
We hired Vidal to be our wedding photographer.
You young people out there may not know this but in 1991 you couldn’t just look up “Key West wedding photographers” on the internet and get 435 responses.
No, what we did back then was first buy a guidebook that would recommend places to stay. Once we found a place to stay, we asked the owners for names of folks who could marry us and take wedding photos.
That’s how we came to hire both Captain Bill and Vidal.
Folks tended to fly by the seats of their pants more often back then.
Even though he was late, my wife and I liked Vidal right away. He was funny in a genuine sort of way, very outgoing and personable.
After we had been on the water for about 20 minutes , Captain Bill looked at Vidal, who looked back and nodded his head.
At that point, Captain Bill stopped the boat, dropped the anchor, and our wedding began.
About 10 minutes later, we were married and we spent 20 minutes or so talking and drinking champagne on the trip back to the dock.
Later, when we got off the boat and were heading to dinner with Jim and Ev, I looked at my wife and said, “Did you notice if Vidal took any pictures?”
She didn’t.
“Oh well,” I said.
My wife didn’t share my nonchalance.
“OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE? WE JUST GOT MARRIED AND HAVE NO IDEA IF WE’LL HAVE ANY WEDDING PHOTOS.!!!!!!”
You can probably tell by the all caps and multiple exclamation points my wife was somewhat concerned.
About a month later, we received a package in the mail. It was from Vidal and in the package were our wedding photos.
This was what my wife said after nervously opening the package.
“HOLY CRAP THESE ARE FABULOUS. HOW DID HE DO THAT? THE LIGHTING, THE COLORS. THE WAY HE CAPTURED EVERTHING!!!!! HE EVEN MADE YOU LOOK SORT OF OK. NO OFFENSE MIKE.”
“None taken,” I said.
My wife liked our wedding photos, is what I’m saying.
Even though my wife and I celebrated our next three or four anniversaries back in Key West we never ran into Vidal.
And, after we bought our first house, and later had our daughter Emma, we stopped going back to Key West.
Trust me, a new house and a baby can seriously cut into your Key West time.
It would be 16 years before we would make it back to Key West. We decided a trip back to the island would be a great way to celebrate our 20th anniversary.
It was my wife’s idea.
My Wife: I think we should go to Key West for our 20th anniversary.
Me: Together?
Wife: $^#^&.
Ha. That’s just a joke.
The plan was for us to go back to Key West with Emma and stay in the same small hotel we stayed in when we got married.
We would show Emma around Key West and hope she would love it as much as we did.
As a surprise my wife was able to track Vidal down and arranged for him to take some family photos for us.
The family photos turned out so well, the next year, we met up with Vidal so he could take a series of photos of Emma.
Photos we love so much they are still hanging in various rooms throughout our house.
Since then, we’ve stayed in contact with Vidal and always make a point to meet up with him whenever we’re in Key West.
Because we’ve stayed in contact with Vidal, we knew that, after years of doing wedding photos and working with hundreds of wedding planners, Vidal decided to sort of eliminate the middleperson and get into the wedding planning business himself.
Which is how Vidal became Emma’s wedding planner.
I remember saying to myself, “Cool, now that we have a wedding planner, we won’t have to worry about anything.”
Myself laughed at me.
“Mike how long have you being married to your wife?
“#%@%s” I said to myself, “You’re right.”
So now we have two wedding planners.
To quote the great Ted Lasso, “Oh this is going to be a hoot.”