Earlier this year I had the pleasure of shooting Sam and Graham at the Angel Hotel Bury St Edmunds.

This was a special wedding for me personally as they were the first couple to book me as their wedding photographer when I moved to Suffolk from South Africa two years ago!

It was a wonderful Spring day back in May when I met them at the Angel Hotel in Bury St Edmunds…

Sam and Graham had chosen to have a intimate wedding with just their families and a few friends in attendance. Weddings like this have a charm all of their own, quite unlike giant lavish affairs. Indeed, one of their charms is their size.

The Wedding party all met at the Angel Hotel where General Manager Lynn Cowan met them and put them at ease with her efficient service. I always like to see this as it’s one of my own personally held beliefs that every person involved in a wedding should go out of their way to ensure that the couple are as relaxed and looked after as  possible. After all, it’s their big day, so nothing should stop them enjoying it.

The Angel is a registered venue for weddings in Bury St Edmunds. Sam and Graham had chosen to have both their service and reception there at the hotel. The service itself was a wonderful moment with both Sam and Graham looking as happy as can be. After they had signed the registry and received all the guests congratulations we moved to the Abbey Gardens for the wedding photography.

One of the benefits of shooting weddings at the Angel Hotel is that it is right across the road from the award winning Abbey Gardens – a perfect venue for a bride and grooms wedding photos.

If you are interested in hiring me for your wedding at the Angel Hotel Bury St Edmunds, then please visit my wedding photography website.

No doubt by now you’ve visit tons of bridal sites, read hundreds of magazines and been confronted by a whole heap of hints and tips regarding sourcing your wedding photograper.

They are all full of great advice about what your photographer should do on your wedding day, but offer scant advice as to what they shouldn’t do. There is one very very important thing that no proper wedding photographer should ever do under any circumstances at all.

Take over your wedding.

You don’t want a photographer who will treat you and your guests like cattle, you want someone who works in conjunction with you to create beautiful images on your wedding day.

It’s one of my proudest claims that I often hear from couples who use my services that their guests didn’t even know a professional photographer was at the wedding. I like to work around all the events and moments of the day, not stage manage them to suit my needs.  Some photographers feel their role at a wedding is to create some sort of universe where they are the centre and everything revolves around them. You very rarely hear magazines and websites warn against this type of photographer who can spoil your day.

From the first moment you contact me with a view to shooting your wedding photos I make it my number one priority to set you at ease, not only with myself but with the process of hiring a professional wedding photographer. Something most of us will only do once in our lifetimes.

The trick to getting the best wedding photographs you can is to be comfortable with the photographer. If he or she is a bossy boots who wants to dictate everything, then no matter how good they are, they are going to rub you the wrong way, and an unhappy bride is NOT what we are after here!

The rapport I have with my clients is one of the things that helps set my work apart from other wedding photographers in Suffolk. I make sure that you are at ease with the process of having your pictures taken and I can promise you that I will never treat you or your guests like cattle.

You wedding is a once in a lifetime event and you should enjoy every moment of it, including having me take wonderful images of you and your loved ones enjoying the day.

Something brides quite often ask me is – ‘what happens if it rains on my wedding day?’

Now that Autumn is here and soon we will be in the winter, the weather is playing more of a role in planning for your wedding day. While everyone knows that the “Great British Summer” isn’t exactly the most stable of weather periods, people are less worried then about the chances of it being inclement on their wedding day.

Brides are naturally worried that if it rains on their wedding day that they won’t have any good images of themselves. After all, we generally picture sunny days and blue skies when we think of outdoor wedding photography.

A ‘proper’ professional will be able to answer any concerns you might have regarding the weather and how it will effect your images. Part of a professionals skill is to take conditions that aren’t all that favourable and turn them to the bridal couples advantage.  I have shot some wonderful images at weddings when the light has faded behind a huge cloud, or the wind has picked up and the rain has come down. Rather than throw my hands up in horror, I use the weather and create images that have a wonderful mood and feel to them.

A good example of this is rain.

I think it’s safe to say that most brides (if not ALL brides) would prefer it if it didn’t rain on their wedding day! The natural reaction is to move indoors and forget the outdoors photography. Granted, if the heavens have opened and it’s raining the proverbial cats and dogs, it may be a good idea to seek some shelter, but if it’s a light rain – crack out the brollies, chuck on some wellies and before you know it, you’ll have pictures from your wedding like no other! Another thing to consider is that after it has rained, colours are so much more vibrant – especially during autumn when the leaves are those wonderful shades of reds, yellows, golds, and oranges.

Just last week I was shooting a wedding at the Bury St Edmunds registry office here in Suffolk and the weather played a part in creating some amazing images.

Emily and Rory had booked me to cover their wedding. It was a lovely intimate affair, just themselves, family and the kids. For those of you who don’t know, the registry office in Bury St Edmunds is behind the cathedral and looks onto the Abbey Gardens. An amazing mix of wonderful trees, a whole range of buildings from Norman, Tudor and Victorian times and of course the Abbey itself. All in all, a perfect venue for wedding photography.

Unfortunately the weather decided that it was going to treat us all to a dull, grey day with persistent drizzle.  Not exactly the most ideal conditions that any bride has ever wished for. I knew that the weather was going to be like this all day so I arrived at the venue about an hour before I was supposed to to scout around and see what alternative plans I could make for the bride and grooms wedding photos.  Obviously I could shoot pictures indoors at the registry office, but I did want to try and incorporate some of the awesome backdrops into their album.

Taking that little bit of extra preparation paid off as I wandered around a corner that I hadn’t been round before and found an absolutely awesome Victorian doorway and staircase. Perfect as it was not only a fantastic setting, but also afforded the bride and groom some cover from the incessant rain while I shot beautiful pictures of them. Luckily my camera is what’s called ‘weather sealed’ – i.e it won’t freak out by being rained upon – unlike most lower end cameras, and I can be drip dried

When we got round to moving outdoors for the wedding photos, it was still raining, so I took Emily and Rory to my new ’secret’ venue along with some umbrellas and we got to shooting. It was great, the doorway and staircase framed them perfectly, the alcove kept them dry (no bride wants to have her hair get wet!) and the brollies provided a fun prop for them to play with.

All in all, a success.

If you’d like to know more about how to get the best wedding photographer in Suffolk, clicky click!

It seems that not that long ago, a wedding photographer having a blog on his or hers website was something unusual, novel and interesting.

Then they exploded, along with Facebook accounts, Digg it buttons and the twittering of tweets. It seemed that everwhere you looked there was yet another wedding photographer who had a blog with one or two posts, a few pictures, and masses of buttons begging you to ‘follow me on <insert social networking of choice here>’.

It was very rare that these blogs actually had anything useful on them for a Bride and Groom to read. Mostly it was just another medium to post pictures on. Us photographers love that – something to post our pictures on – but we can also miss the point sometimes. If you are reading this blog post, you are, hopefully – for the sake of my business – a bride to be, or a lucky man who has had the woman of his dreams say yes to his proposal. Either way you are taking your first steps into a world that you most likely haven’t been part of before – PLANNING FOR YOUR WEDDING.

I’m sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you there!

You love your partner, you want to spend the rest of your life with them and for others to share in your love and happiness on your special day. For you your wedding is about this love and sense of occasion, and so it should be, but you are going to be dealing with businesses to make your special day a day to remember, and they are, well, they are businesses.

I’m hoping that by reading this blog you’ll get a better idea about what to look for when choosing, not only a wedding photographer, but also one of the many specialist suppliers who will help make your dreams become a reality on your wedding day.

Obviously the focus will be on photography, but along the way there will be plenty of hints and tips on how to make the planning of your wedding go as smoothly as possible which will allow you to enjoy the lead up to your big day rather than it be like work (ugh!).

Of course I’m still going to show you pictures, I mean after all, I am a photographer!

You’ll find plenty more examples of my images on my brand spanking new suffolk wedding photography site