It's so satisfying to pull the pictures out one by one, cut off the groom and return the pictures to the album.

I spent a couple years running final inspection and shipping for an outfit that did wedding photography and also processed films and made prints for other wedding photographers. Biggest disaster was getting a couple of weddings mixed up. Everything is so standardized your only hope was to sort by the bridesmaid's dresses.

My all-time favorite was an ultra-lavish Jewish wedding in San Francisco. They had a full size circus tent for the reception and the guests numbered in the hundreds. Professional entertainers, gourmet caterers, absolutely the works. The cost must have been beyond mere accounting, they probably had to hire astronomers to handle numbers that big.

There were many albums to be made up, each with dozens of pictures and every picture a full color 8x10. The denizens of the darkrooms printed to roll paper for a week. Finally they were ready to run, so we shut down everything else and the processing machines ran roll after roll of paper for that wedding all day long.

By the end of the day we had multiple stacks of 8x10 prints over a yard high and were starting to package them for shipment to the photog. Then the photog called.

"Is there any chance of canceling that order?

"No, we just finished running it, but why?"

"They got an annulment."

Of course the bride's family is responsible for paying for the pictures no matter what, but when you're dealing with rich folks you'll have to sue for your money even if everything worked out.

I'm sure the photog, experienced with "society" people in San Francisco, figured on suing for his money in the first place. All our photogs who worked Beverly Hills added legal costs to every quote - it's the only way rich people pay.