The Memory Card at the Wedding

Lidia has photographed forty weddings, and she thinks she has seen every possible problem. By two o'clock, the ceremony is over, and she has taken about four hundred pictures. Then she checks the screen of her main camera. A small red message says: "Card error. Cannot read."

Her heart beats faster. She takes the card out, puts it back in, and turns the camera off and on. Nothing changes. The vows, the rings and the first kiss are all on that card. The couple will never do them again.

Lidia takes a slow breath. A good photographer, she tells herself, always has a plan B. She puts the broken card into an envelope, so she won't use it by mistake. Then she takes her backup camera from the bag. It is older and smaller, but it works.

Then she finds the bride, Brigid, and explains the problem quietly. She expects tears, but Brigid only raises her eyebrows. "Well," she says, "everyone here has a phone. Ask them."

At the start of the lunch, Lidia borrows the microphone. "Dear guests, I need a small favour," she says. "If you took pictures of the ceremony, please send them to me. Even the blurry ones. Especially the ones from the back row."

By the time dessert arrives, a shared folder is filling up. There is a photo of the groom wiping his eyes, taken by his grandmother. There are pictures of the bridesmaids walking in, taken by a little boy from knee height. Lidia has to admit that some of them are charming.

She works until the last dance with her backup camera. She does not stop smiling for a moment. Nobody at the party can tell that anything has gone wrong.

At home that night, she is too nervous to sleep. She installs a recovery program on her laptop and connects the broken card. Then she watches the progress bar crawl across the screen. It takes four hours. When it finishes, she holds her breath and opens the folder.

Most of the files are there, from the walk down the aisle to the cutting of the cake. Only the last thirty are damaged.

Lidia types a short message to Brigid and attaches the full album. "Good news," she writes. "You have more photos than I promised."