Your wedding day story
25 wedding day stories later, including my own, and here we are in October. It has been 7 months since my last confession, I mean post, ha-ha. It’s been a busy summer and although wedding season – which I consider to be 6 months, April – September is over, I have just finished editing the photographs from the wedding I did earlier this month, and have 2 more weddings this weekend.
Come rain or shine, it’s been a lot of fun. From registry offices and hotels to stately homes and castles. They are all beautiful and brilliant for the same reason – the happy couple and their family and friends. This is really what makes the wedding what it is and certainly from my perspective documenting it and capturing it all to create their wedding day story.
Your Wedding Day
Anstey Frith House is without doubt one of the most popular choices for registry offices in Leicester. Situated pretty centrally, it’s out of town, yet close enough to the surrounding villages and towns too. I think the garden is what attracts people because it’s literally wrapped in trees and so for photographs, it’s the perfect backdrop. There’s a couple of huge trees that frame a stone bench.
The only downside is that the time each couple gets in the garden is very limited, just 15 minutes from leaving the ceremony room. I usually have guests stand either side of the path that leads up to the white gazebo where the couple stand before walking down the path under a cascade of confetti.
There aren’t many weddings I’ve done where the couple don’t want some group photographs. I encourage people to keep them to a minimum because people lose the will to live otherwise, and I always aim to have these relaxed and fun so that the photos come out that way. Nothing worse than marching everyone to their places, barking orders of, ‘stand here!’
I like to save some time to then wander with the couple, having them focus on each other (not me!) to capture some natural photographs for them. Surprisingly, somehow, we always seem to get all the photographs they wanted in the time allowed. I think it’s a secret garden and time stands still a bit because there have been times where I can’t fathom how we’ve managed to do it in such little time!
Having a beautiful stately home or castle wedding means that whichever way you look [through the camera] the backdrop is going to be incredible. Although a documentary photographer, I have been known to do some ‘decorating’ to hotel or registry office walls in my photos. And my ‘pet peev’ is the glaring green fire exit signs, which I most often times remove because they take away from the image. I realise that health and safety at wedding venues is paramount, people need to know where to run in the case of an emergency, but sorry people, on a wedding photograph, the green signs don’t look great!
This summer I was lucky enough to visit Rockingham Castle where Rhiannon & Josh had their wedding. (Seriously, if you haven’t been, go!) They were officially married in Las Vegas earlier this year and wanted to have a wedding ceremony in England with all their family and friends. People flew in from here, there and everywhere because Josh is American with some German heritage and they also in Germany, and England too! I think he was really a secret service agent but that’s another story.
It was just glorious, both as a castle and a wedding venue. I mean, I love castles, so maybe it had more of a hold over me. From a photography point of view, you just want a lot to photograph and this wedding did not disappoint.
The castle, obviously and then a Routemaster, aka the old London red double decker bus, that ferried the guests back and forth, ceremony in the Great Hall followed by a drinks reception in the garden, photographs in and around the castle grounds, including the beautiful English gardens and elephant hedges, travel themed wedding breakfast, Las Vegas themed reception complete with showgirls and black jack tables. Honestly, I could keep going! It was a photography dream!
As I said, it’s the people that make the wedding day much of what it is for me. That also includes the people who work at the venue too. In my experience not all vicars and priests are as godly as they may seem and not everyone extends basic human kindness when it comes to food and water! Thankfully this has been a tiny percentage and for the most part, everyone is very friendly, welcoming and helpful and when you are part of the wedding team, this makes a lot of difference.
The team at Rockingham Castle in case you are wondering where on another level. I even got afternoon cake in the office and their team dog, Norman, was just brilliant. If you visit their Instagram page you can see him. At the time of writing this, it’s coming up to Halloween, so he is dressed as a ghost!
Capturing the wedding day story means being everywhere at once. Surprisingly, this includes a whole host of other things like having a stash of life saving equipment in my bag like safety pins and hair grips, tissues and Haribo! I am often to be found with my camera swinging while trying to button up a bride’s dress because I am the only one without the limiting nails, or the bride’s mum has gone MIA.
As a person, I am pretty energetic and helpful so it’s natural to me to just help with whatever is in front of me and all my equipment is either around my neck or on my shoulder – that way I am never going to be caught short.
I can also be a bit of a time lord sometimes. Most venues want the timings to go to plan. From the food point of view that’s understandable. Civil ceremonies are usually always on time because of registrars or celebrants. Church weddings can run a little later – I’ve actually been at weddings where the groom and guests are all in the church, bride is out of the car with her bridesmaids and then some lunatic guests come hurtling down the path, ‘got stuck in traffic’ or ‘sorry running late’. Who does that!? It happens though.
In my experience, wedding breakfasts run on sometimes and then that puts back the DJ set up for the reception starting. People also, naturally of course, don’t arrive at bang on 7 pm for your reception so I find that cake cutting and first dance always goes a little later than planned. So there are always times when venues ask me to help with making sure the cake cutting and first dance happen. Honestly, I think people like to get the first dance over and done with because then they can relax and enjoy the evening without having anything else, ‘official’ to do.
Most weddings for me finish up after the first dance and I always ask the DJ if he/she can get everyone on the dance floor after the first dance because it’s a nice way to finish up [for the photography]. It also means I have left the building by the time the debauchery starts! Of course, some people like to capture that! Then it is pretty much the same time again as I spent at the wedding, editing…I love editing, which is a good thing when you have 1400 photographs to go through.
So as much as I am documenting the day and capturing whatever is going on through the day, I create the wedding day story in Lightroom, editing. It’s so enjoyable for me choosing the photographs and editing them. I am not an over-editor when it comes to photographs but I have been known to do the odd bit of virtual dentistry. I am often asked if I can remove an extra bit of arm fat or slim waists down, to which I reply no, but I can send you a link for a great ab workout!
I take people’s happiness very seriously. I mean it’s your wedding day – one of the most special days in your life. Ultimately, it’s about having captured all the love, laughter, tears and emotion, then giving the couple back their wedding day in photographs, so that they feel like they are reliving their day. I always say, if you aren’t crying when you watch the movie slideshow, I’ve not done my job properly.
It makes me so happy when couples message me back after watching the slideshow for the first time and they say how much they loved it, they laughed, cried, can’t stop watching it, will treasure the photographs forever and so on. It isn’t about me – it makes me happy because I’ve been able to do that for someone.
For me, it’s about capturing the emotion at the right time – really every photograph you look at tells a story – even in just a moment of what’s happening right in that second. And then, strung together, to tell your wedding day story.
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