Formal Group Photos - The Big Mystery

OK, here we go again on the perennial subject of group photos, by which I mean the few we do at most weddings in which people are arranged into a tidy group which then smiles at the camera. Eventually.

After each of the first hundred or so weddings we did, we would go home trying to work out what we did wrong. We tried all sorts of tactics, some more subtle than others. And nothing we ever did made the slightest difference.

Why do they do it? Why is it that as soon as we've announced that the couple want us to crack on with the group photos, and we've told people that they're needed now for them, four women decide to do a loo run? The best man heads for the bar. Uncle Henry decides to go back to his room to change his shirt. Granny totters off for a lie down. The ushers vanish. And the young mum on Valium who parked the baby buggy in the aisle just before the bride walked down it decides to feed her youngest.

This of course leaves the bride and groom passing the time by talking to two deaf wrinklies and wondering where their guests are. Often the groom will then dispatch a couple of his chums to chase people up, but they will disappear too. And if one of the dads decides to help out, more often than not he will go down the same Black Hole Of Wedding Guests. As will the mum who then trots off to see where her husband went ...

We've long ago given up getting even a tiny bit stressed about it, because we know it's pretty much inevitable. We can give the couple a few pointers beforehand which might help matters, but we know that on the day, at 95% of weddings in England, the formal group photos will take longer than they should do simply because of guest apathy.

But why is it like this? What is it about Brits that when they're invited to a wedding and they've been told that the couple would like a photo with them, they don't want to play ball?

Does anybody know what the problem is?