On into April 2014 and the wedding of Andrew and Jennifer. They were getting married in their local church, where they were members of the congregation, and then holding a reception at Thornbury Golf Club. Jen’s mum and dad had been married in the same church, on the same date, thirty four years before.

It was the one and only time a vicar allowed me to shoot at the front of the church, behind the alter. It’s such a shame so many of the clergy refuse access here as you’re right in the heart of the ceremony, where all the emotion is taking place.

Jen was getting ready at home so we started there before I left to meet Andrew and his guys at the church. We had good weather and it was nice having time to get shots of the guys and to pap the guests as they began to arrive. Jen was arriving with her Father, just before the ceremony, so the Bridesmaids joined us for some pre wedding shots not too long after I’d arrived.

Slowly, everyone drifted into the church as we approached ceremony time. Jen and her Dad arrived on time but then someone realised an important family member hadn’t arrived. They decided we would have to wait for her and I can’t recall how late she was. It did put everything back by at least thirty minutes. If this had been a winter wedding I’d have been sweating on shot time but, I knew we would have the evening to catch up anything we had missed.

Shooting at the front of the church was a real treat. I’d upgraded my main camera from a Canon 5D MK2 to the Mk3 version. That came with a silent shutter setting which was a really useful feature on this occasion. I would say that in all our wedding de-briefs, none of the brides or grooms had told me they had heard the camera or that I had been a distraction.

Shooting in most churches could be really challenging as they’re usually quite dark. I was helped by the fact that the Canon was a full frame camera, but I’d still have to shoot at high iso speeds which introduced grain or noise into the images. That’s not such a problem nowadays but back in 2014 there wasn’t any software that was much good at repairing the noise.

I was surprised, when I checked out the metadata on the two images above, at how slow a speed I was shooting at. I always used a monopod and my lens would have had image stabilisation, but sudden or quick movements would have led to blurry images.

All done inside the church we moved outside for a few couple shots and then the confetti shot. The church here was perfect for that. I’d found a location where some of the guests could throw confetti down onto the couple whilst they stood in front of a wall below the guests. It worked perfectly and I came away with a confetti shot I was really pleased with.

Church shots sorted, we all moved on to the Golf Club for the wedding breakfast. We had some time there for a few group shots, before everyone sat down to eat, and then had a nice long chilled evening to grab a few more shots before it got dark.

This was one of those lovely, joyful, chilled weddings where everything went to plan and I think, looking back, you can see that reflected in the images we came away with. Jen was really pleased with the images we gave her after. We were asked to photograph her sisters wedding and would have loved to, but circumstances, not too far ahead of us, meant we were unable to do that. More on that in a future blog.

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