On into July and the marriage of Pete and Susie. The wedding was in two locations. They were getting married in a church near Wedmore in Somerset before moving on to continue their wedding celebrations at a village hall, on the Somerset levels, with caterers providing the wedding breakfast.

Susie was getting ready at home, with her bridal party, so we met there for a few pics of the girls preparing before I left to meet Pete at the church. I’d grown to really like these simple weddings where the Bride and Groom had a lot of control on how there day was going to run. A lovely wedding day wasn’t always all about spending £15,000-20,000 on a venue for a Saturday wedding, and that’s based on prices back in 2014!

I had to leave the house pretty early as the church was a good thirty minutes away. By this time Susie’s mum and dad had arrived so I left Lin to take a few more getting ready shots. One of those shots is the image below which is one of my favourite images from all the weddings we shot.

Back at the church all was going well. Pete and his pals were all there with family and guests arriving whilst I took a few shots.

Time goes so quickly and before I knew it everyone had disappeared into the church awaiting Susie’s arrival. She was on time and arrived in a lovely old vintage car. Over the course of the weddings I’d been shooting I liked to take a picture of the bride in her wedding car, through an open car window. Unfortunately her vintage car had a soft top in place with plastic windows. As it was I took a picture of Susie (the image below) through the plastic and it worked just as well.

It was a nice church service although some prankster had written ‘HELP ME’ on the soles of Pete’s shoes. That caused some hilarity amongst the guests when Pete knelt down at the alter and the message was clear for everyone to see. Somewhere along the line the vicar upset Susie. I’d had no problems him and I think he’d been rushing her so he could lock the church and go home. A familiar story with some of the clergy I’d encountered.

We had plenty of time to get our group and couple shots outside the church, before everyone made their way to the village hall to continue the wedding celebrations. We hung back to take a few formal shots outside the church, with Pete and Susie, before following the rest of the guests.

I was a little worried about where we were going to take our wedding shots once we arrived at the village hall. I hadn’t checked out the hall, prior to the wedding. Susie had told me it was a modern, well lit, hall and they had organised access to an adjoining farmers field. She was hoping they could get some wedding pics there. She wasn’t to worried and put no pressure on me, so I decided all I could do was go with the flow and see what we could do.

As it happened the field worked out just great. I’d made sure we’d used the church to get our formal pics. We made use of the wooden gate securing the field which turned out to be a great prop for some more relaxed portraits and group shots. Nothing had been practiced or planned beforehand but it just worked out really well.

This was a lovely wedding day. We were getting better at what we were trying to do. Susie and Pete hadn’t relied on a venue to run their wedding and had put lots of thought, time and effort into organising their day. It paid off because everybody seemed to be having the best of times and everything ran smoothly. For us, we had a thoroughly enjoyable day as well, and I was really pleased with the images we came away with.

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