The Wonderful Wedding of Steven & Alexandra - June 2023.

I photograph weddings with a storytelling, or ‘candid’ approach and love to make real photographs of loved ones, families, and friendships that are filled with narrative and meaning. Here is one of my weddings from last year, some photographs of which have recently been featured by the Wedding Photojournalist Association spotlight 2024.

I met Alexandra at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield, she is an artist herself and her husband to be, a filmmaker, we got chatting and quickly realised we had a lot in common about art, photography and creativity in general, we swapped numbers and planned to do a collaboration at some point. A few months later when Steven proposed, Alexandra got in touch straightaway…. ‘Do you do wedding photography by any chance?’ of course I said ‘YES’, and it was such an honour and a privilege to witness, capture and be a part of their beautiful day.

Here’s some of the photographs of the day…

The Chapel at Hebden Bridge.

The wedding was at the beautiful Blackshaw Head Chapel, located in the village of Blackshaw Head near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, a historic Methodist chapel dating back to 1815. The Chapel is set amidst the rolling hills of West Yorkshire and has served as a focal point for the local community for over two centuries.

Nic is so calm, organised, reliable, trustworthy and great-humoured - she's just so wonderful to be around in emotionally-heightened situations and she is so sensitive to how people experience their events. This is a part of her job that she takes very seriously and it feeds into her work. She is highly intuitive and knows exactly where to be and when, and understands the needs of her photography subjects.

During the ceremony and the tea and speeches in the chapel afterwards, Nic managed to place herself in all the right places at all the right times, and captured our marriage and celebration so beautifully. We never wanted the posed line-ups of traditional wedding photo shoots, and we knew that Nic would take the natural, story-telling photos that we wanted instead. Nic absolutely nailed it, and we are so delighted with our photos.

Alexandra

The Music

Music at this wedding played a huge role, so much so that I couldn’t get the incredible sounds of the choir out of my mind as I edited the images. I know that for the bride and groom, music was especially important to them, and a lot of planning, coordination and preparation went into getting the music just right. Of course I did everything I could to document this for them so that when Steven & Alexandra look at these photographs, hopefully they can hear and feel the music all over again, as I do.

The Part Singers, a vocal ensemble of experienced singers from West Yorkshire, led by Roshan Battiwalla and organised by Ruth Bostock along with the eight-part brass band Made2Measure Brass directed by John Hopkinson (award-winning flugelhorn player) were truly incredible. They created such a rich and overwhelmingly beautiful sound in the Chapel it was very difficult to maintain a dry eye! You can see the emotion and pure joy on the bride and groom here.

Nic is an amazing photographer whose photos document, focus on interactions between people, tell stories, remain true to what’s happening, and capture moments in their natural context in a beautifully authentic and sensitive way.

Alexandra

The Transportation

The Father of the bride had a Jensen that he’d had since 1972, now I don’t claim to know a lot about cars but I knew that this was important to capture, the Jenson was such a huge part of the story and one worth telling, it was such a beautiful moment when Alexandra got in the car as her Father helped with the seatbelt, and we had no problems getting to the Chapel!

The online gallery is superb and we are trying to choose the photos we want enlarged - it’s difficult to narrow it down - there are so many we love! We also loved having Nic there as a beautiful, special person to be around, and we cannot recommend Nic highly enough for a sensitive, authentic, careful documentation of any special event.

Thank you again, Nic, for creating such a beautiful piece of documentation of our amazingly happy day. 

Alexandra

A wonderful day was had by all!

Let’s Capture the time of your lives!

If you are interested in learning more please have a look at my Documentary Wedding Photography approach or get in touch to find out about availability and collection options.

Go back to the Documentary Photography Journal to see what else I’ve been up to, or come and say ‘hi’ on Instagram.