The wedding-industrial complex is grotesque: engagement flash-mobs, ceremonies filmed by drones, self-congratulatory “She Said Yes” social media posts.
And in the surest sign yet that the apocalypse is imminent, today my editor has asked me to write about the burgeoning phenomenon of blowjob wedding photos. Did I type that correctly? I have something in my eye.
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Here’s a primer for anyone lucky enough never to have been to a wedding or given a blowjob: Blowjob photos typically depict brides simulating fellatio on their grooms, from a parked classic car or perhaps behind a country hedgerow. They’re for couples that want to demonstrate how cute and sexually liberated they are, and they’re coming soon to a heteronormative wedding near you.
Blowjob wedding photos first sprung to public attention after an image of two newlyweds, taken by Dutch photographer Michel Klooster, went viral. He stands in verdant woodland; she crouches in front of him. “This is so fucking extra!” cheered Buzzfeed. In Cyprus, just-married British couple Mark and Samantha Simons embraced the trend in front of a vintage car at sunset.
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Weeks later, another couple from the UK engaged in a spot of post-betrothal faux oral outside a Greek church. But like many other things British people do abroad, this did not go down well with the locals. After Matthew and Carly Lunn simulated fellatio outside the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Paul on Rhodes, a local bishop banned all foreign couples from marrying there.
“We were just pretending and having a laugh,” complained Matthew Lunn in comments to British newspaper the Sun. “The Greeks have completely over-reacted.” One couple—whose St Paul wedding was cancelled in the wake of the blowjob picture—are now considering legal action against the Lunns.
But how does the photographer responsible for unleashing the world’s most gag-inducing sub-genre of wedding photography feel about this new trend? Also: Literally, why?
Turns out, Klooster isn’t responsible for creating the genre of blowjob wedding photos—America is! (Or so he claims.) Really, it’s not surprising that the nation that gave us Say Yes To The Dress figured out another way to desecrate the holy institution of matrimony.
“I saw a blowjob wedding picture on a US website last year,” Klooster tells Broadly. “I’m not the first person to do this, just the first person whose picture went viral.”
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Inexplicably, Klooster’s phallocentric approach to wedding photography has won him admirers around the world. “I got a bunch of private messages from photographers around the world that liked my creative way of thinking,” he enthuses.
Despite this, he doesn’t just want to be known as that blowjob guy: “I want to be the photographer that`s famous because he makes beautiful pictures.”
I ask Klooster how he’d feel about taking unsimulated blowjob photos, but unsurprisingly he’s not too keen. “I’d refuse. I don’t do porn-related photography.”
Also, what about a cunnilingus-themed shoot? “Of course! I only need a nice couple that would dare to do it.”