Last Saturday saw the wedding of Steven and Kerry. It was our first wedding of 2010 (it is very unusual for us not to have a January wedding) and the start of a very busy year for us with over 70 weddings already booked. Many wedding photographers are reporting difficult times and several have gone out of business in the Cheshire area, but as over 80% of our bookings come from recommendations (as this wedding was) the recession hasn’t any impact on us.
The wedding started with us visting Kerry at her mums home in Hyde, Cheshire to photograph her ‘with the girls’ as she got ready. We already knew one of the bridesmaids as we photographed her wedding last year then it was off to The Grapes pub across the road from Hyde Chapel to capture the final moments of freedom of the groom, Steven.
A lovely new Bentley whisked Kerry from the house to the church for the ceremony. The layout of the Church was very unusual in that there was no central aisle for the bride to walk down – so she had to walk around the side of the pews, weaving around pillars to get to the altar. Hyde Chapel is one of those old-fashioned venues that frowns upon wedding photographers and strict instructions were given as to what we could do and not do – to the point where even the signing of the register shot was set up and pre-posed by the female verger who then told me exactly where I could stand to take the picture! But not to worry, we did what we could and the pictures were still great.
After the ceremony Kerry and Steven made there way the the reception venue – Mere Court Hotel near Knutsford – Those of you ho have read this blog for a while will know it is one of our favourite Cheshire wedding venues – and the weather was just perfect. After leaving the ‘happy couple’ for a while to meet their guests we spent 20 minutes photographing the ‘formal’ pictures and then spent the rest of the afternoon taking unposed, informal pictures (our favourite).
A few pictures from the day can be seen set to music below.