The one with the stroppy Church Warden.
A late booking to shoot Luke and Ashleigh’s wedding meant our final wedding of 2012 would be in November at Aust, South Gloucestershire. Luke had ties to the church there and the couple very much wanted a church wedding, which was followed by a reception at The Grange Hotel in Winterbourne.

I’d visited both locations prior to the wedding. Most of the places we were shooting in were new to me so I always tried to be ahead of the game. A pre wedding visit allowed me to scout the area out for photo opportunities, check out where I might get good light and, on most occasions, meet the staff there and introduce ourselves. I’ll also admit to looking through other photographers sample books, at venues, for ideas and researching the internet to see what other professionals had done at the locations. I reckon that’s just good planning.

On a serious note, in relation to copying other photographers, I have found that trying to recreate another image, in any genre of photography, is pretty hopeless. It just never works. I was pretty relentless in researching other wedding photographers work in my downtime. I’d get ideas for poses that work, locations that were nice, props that added something quirky etc, etc but that’s just learning.

It’s Raining Again.
Wet weather again and, being November, it was quite a dark, dank day. Still, there was nothing we could do about that so we just had to take our chances on outdoor shots and try to turn the rain to our advantage. You’ll find photographers can sometimes moan about the weather conditions whatever they throw up. Midday sun casting shadows, strong winds blowing everything around, overcast days with flat lighting etc, etc. You just have to suck it up and make the most of what you have.

I’d met up with Ashleigh and her Bridesmaids at her house but didn’t have too long there as I had to be at the church to meet Luke. Timings were tight and the wedding was planned for 1pm. I allowed an hour for the ceremony. We then had shots outside the church before leaving for the hotel. Ashleigh wanted to stop on route to get a picture, on a hilltop, of her and Luke with the Old Severn Bridge in the background. I reckoned if we were lucky we might get to the venue just before 4pm leaving 30mins or so for a few outdoor shots at the hotel before we lost light.

All went well with Luke and his guys. Ashleigh was only slightly late and the church ceremony was lovely. I’ll just touch on my experience with Vicars here. What I found, over the three years we were working on weddings, was that if the couple were known to the vicar and they were part of his congregation, they were fine and nothing was too much trouble. Perhaps I just encountered the wrong people but if the couple had just rented the church for the day, with no other links to it, they could be awful. I’ll go over this in more detail in a future post, with one rude, dreadful member of the clergy I had dealings with in 2014.

The Stroppy Church Warden
However, the vicar being helpful was one thing, his church warden was another. Luke and Ashleigh had wanted me to take a few pics inside the church before we left for the hotel. This was even more relevant as it was raining quite hard outside. We’d planned to do this once the church was empty, after the ceremony.

To that end, I decided to leave some kit inside the church, my flash gun and flash brolly etc. whilst we shot a few guest shots outside. I was just organising that when an officious church warden approached me and said “You’ll have to remove all of that and be out of here in the next ten minutes. We have a Parish meeting we’re holding here”. Initially her aggressive manner threw me. Think of the Verger from Dad’s Army and you’ll get an idea of her attitude. I’m not sure why but I always expected churchy people to be pleasant and nice.

I know now that’s not always so. Some are very rude and difficult (more difficult encounters were to come, but that’s for future posts). I quickly got my mojo back and told the warden we were going to come back in, take our shots and leave when we were ready. I knew that the couple had paid £500 to rent the church and deserved better than this. I pointed this out to her and told her I’d speak with the vicar if this was a problem and she backed off a little. Needless to say we came back and took our shots before leaving.

The rest of the day rolled along ok. The bridge shots were ok but the hilltop was very muddy and Ashleigh didn’t have the right footwear for that. Muddy ground and full length wedding dresses are a recipe for disaster. Shots done we were a bit late getting to the venue and we did lose light quickly but I’d anticipated that.

Despite the challenging conditions we did come away with plenty of nice shots. Ashleigh must have thought so because she recommended me to other members of her family for two future weddings. I was grateful for that and to say thank you for the bookings, a few years later, we organised a studio session and photographed the couples first child.

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.