Andy and Hayley at the Sun Pavilion

Harrogate is like Leeds's posh maiden aunt. She sits up there at the foot of the Dales, over the border in North Yorkshire, and looks down into the valley to see what the noisy younger city is up to. She's all Victorian wrought iron splendour and landscaped genteel parks, Betty's Tea rooms and farmers markets to Leeds's red brick urban bustle, night clubs and shopping heaven.

  One of her loveliest treasures has to be the Sun Pavilion, on the edge of Valley Gardens, a light, open and welcoming little venue that collects sunshine through a stained glass roof, where Hayley and Andy got married in their own relaxed and uncomplicated style. 

Another lovely couple enjoying their big day with all of their family around them. I'm delighted to have been there to shoot it.  

Carly and Liam's Wedding

Carly and Liam came to me last summer, recommended by a friend, and so I was delighted to accept the opportunity to photograph their wedding. The year passed very quickly, and after our final planning session at the end of June, the 4th of August arrived almost before we knew it, and we all found ourselves at the Campanile Hotel in Bradford ready for them to tie the knot. It was a lovely relaxed and happy day, full of extended family and friends. Just the way weddings should be! 

A little bit extra...

Now that I've done a few weddings, and have established the way I like to work with my couples, a pattern has emerged, and recent feedback has made me take it a little more seriously.

Speaking to Sarah the other weekend when I handed over the disk of images from her wedding to Paul, and then whilst having an initial chat (via Skype - it's all new technology here at CSP Towers!) with Jo and Claire, who are due to tie the knot in 4 months time, it's been brought to my attention that the questions I ask during my planning sessions also help my brides and grooms think more realistically about the wedding.

Where it's quite normal for the lucky couple to think about their happiest day in terms of isolated events with certain features that need to be organised, I need to know who will be where at what time, what they will be doing, and how they will be getting there and leaving. It's all about moving people, and moving around them.

So, where the couple's list is about choosing the venue, flowers, cake, cars, suits and all those elements, my list is a more cohesive plan of how the day will run. What will be happening immediately before you get married? How and where will your guests arrive and gather? How will you first see each other? What will happen during the ceremony? And so on for the everything else that will happen whilst I'm there.

What I tend to recommend, to get people thinking the way I need them to, is to imagine the day is all over. What do you want to remember? What do you need to do to make those things happen? And how can I be in the right place at the right time to photograph those things, and all the extra little moments that you might miss because you're too busy enjoying yourselves?  If you want certain things to be in the images, like confetti falling gently over you whilst you walk through an avenue of your smiling friends outstretched arms, then we have to make sure those things happen the way you want them to so that I can photograph them.

The one thing that's almost certain is that I've had more weddings than you have (unless you are a registrar, a cleric or related service professional).  I have seen lots of beautiful and individual variations on the theme of two people who love each other standing up in front of their friends and families and telling the world that they want to be together for the rest of their lives.

While you are moving from one matrimonial state to another; moving from the door of the vintage car/bus/campervan through the church/hotel suite/town hall state room; out onto the lawn/barnyard/balcony; off to wedding breakfasts/banquets with or without speeches and on to the first dance and a totally awesome celebration knees-up, the emotional pitch of the day moves from nerves and anticipation, through excitement to relaxed enjoyment, and ends in total celebration. How best can we create those moments and capture them?

Feel free to use my experience! Pick my brains, talk me through the plans you already have to identify the things you may have overlooked and help you come up with ways to make your day exactly what you wanted.

Plus, I'm a big soppy wet hen when it comes down to it. I love a good wedding, and have been caught with a lump in my throat on more than one occasion. Even though I might not know my brides and grooms quite as well as the guests do, my emotions move with theirs, and it's an awareness of this that informs my planning for the photographic opportunities.

I want to get the best photographs I can for you, and the happier and more relaxed you are, the easier that makes my job.

Sarah and Paul's Wedding

Paul and Sarah got married at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel at Leeds Canal Basin on 30th of March, although by my reckoning, this was the 3rd name his hotel's had since we've been planning this wedding! It's been City Inn and Mint in recent years, but what it's always had is an astonishing 13th Floor bar, the Skylounge, which looks out across practically the whole of Leeds. The hotel sits at the corner where the Leeds and Liverpool canal meets the River Aire as it comes out from under the city centre. There's been a lot of building here over the last 10years, creating lots of city flats, shopping areas and offices. I tell you all of this in explanation - the tallest building in Yorkshire sits on the other side of the water, and it's created a lethal (no exaggeration) wind tunnel which whips around that corner in it's own little circle. When we went for our walk-through to scout out the location together at the end of February, we watched a man falling through the ice on the canal, and struggling to get out of the frozen water - no doubt blown in. 

Thankfully by their big day the snow had gone and we were blessed with a bright sunny day, but it was inevitable that the wind would be a feature of the wedding photos, and we had lots of fun trying to cope with it. We shot all the group photos down at ground level, and then went up to the bar, above everything in the city including the wind, for the wedding breakfast. I left them to enjoy their meal and drinks with their guests for the afternoon, and then rejoined them at the Royal Armouries for a proper evening knees-up in the Wellington Suite. 

This was my first wedding of the year, and it was beautiful. And, judging by the message I got back from Sarah, it would seem that they enjoyed their day too: 

"Thank you for the pictures they are absolutely brilliant brings back such beautiful memories, would love to do it all again, you made us feel so relaxed about the whole day and I think that shows in the pictures you have taken. I will defo recommend you to anyone. Thanks again for making our day so special. Sarah and Paul." 

I love being a photographer!