Big Day Weddings

Two grooms in a bath at the Zetter Town House Hotel in Clerkenwell? This can only be a quirky London wedding day!

Dean and Johannes came to us on recommendation from couple Julie and Ed’s big day at Southwark Cathedral, and reception at the now closed and sadly missed wine and event venue Vinopolis. They had seen the way we worked and the images from that lovely day so they booked us with confidence. We didn’t have a great deal of communication beforehand, but as we knew what they were looking for and we had worked at all the venues previously that was no big deal.

I love that fact that the boys pretty much got themselves ready in front of Hackney Town Hall itself while they waited for guests to arrive. Seriously, only men would do that!

The main council chamber is being refurbished, so the ceremony itself was held in a fantastic alternative wood panelled room and was the perfect size for the boy’s wedding party. A special mention to the registrars on this day, who we found to be both sensitive and enthusiastic, and they really added to the occasion.

Once married Dean and Johannes had a receiving line outside the town hall and then a confetti throw on the steps at the front.

Two vintage London red routemaster buses were waiting to take the wedding party on a magical mystery tour, both loaded with the finest champagne on tap. How these bus conductors manage to pour drinks on a 1950-60’s bus with that suspension is beyond us! It’s a skill for sure.

We stopped briefly for a mass visit to the fantastic City of York pub in Holborn, before returning to the routemaster sight seeing tour through central London landmarks. I sat there spotting  all the venues and areas we had photographed in. It was a lot!

Well travelled now we arrived at the Zetter Town House Hotel for the canapés and drink reception. This was actually held in the lovely and atmospheric St John’s Museum Gardens nearby. I managed to grab fifteen minutes during this to take the grooms around the block for some couple shots before returning for the speeches in the gardens. During this time Joanna did some reportage coverage of the guests generally having a very good time indeed.

All speeches were entertaining and well delivered, and once those were done the wedding party made their way across the courtyard to the Zetter for the evening reception. Once more drinks and canapés were served in abundance and Dean and Johannes cut their cake and socialised the evening away. As you can see from the first image they also had time to take a dry bath together!

Here’s a link to Julie and Ed’s wedding day: Southwark Cathedral wedding with Butlers Wharf, Tower Bridge & Vinopolis reception

Other Hackney Town Hall weddings: Hackney and Hoxton London Wedding for Carly and Jim

Other Clerkenwell Weddings: Islington Town Hall Wedding & Peasant Pub Clerkenwell Reception

Official website for the Zetter: Zetter Town House

By David Green

The last few years balloons to enhance a wedding day and as a photographic prop have become increasingly popular. To be honest wedding photographers love them, well we do for sure!

What it does is give us interesting options for photos that otherwise wouldn’t be there. Bouquets are great of course, but balloons allow both the bride and groom to hold on to something during a shoot, and subliminally we believe they actually help relax them. Now we are pretty good as it is at making our wedding couples feel at ease, but having a prop is always useful.

Reading actors biographies they say that they often make use of props to help them in their performances. It literally gives them something to do! Michael Caine is a fine example of this. Next time you watch him on screen, notice how many times he uses an object in the scene while he is acting.

Now there is one golden rule for wedding balloons and that is to make sure they are helium filled. That way they will float upwards of their own accord, otherwise, well they just look a bit silly and floppy! It sounds obvious, but we have witnessed the occasional disappointing wedding balloon.

Featured here are some recent weddings from this year and last that made good use of balloons for the couples. Links to these lovely London and home counties wedding days on the blog are featured at the end of this post.

See more here: Wedding day at Asia House and Sketch in Central London

Best Italian wedding in Woking!

Islington Town Hall Wedding

By David Green

It is always a pleasure for us to return to Theobalds Park to photograph a wedding day, and Jess and Tom’s special occasion was no exception. Some London wedding photographers tend to photograph repeatedly in the same venues, perhaps ten or more times a year. To be honest we wouldn’t like to do the same place more than two or three times in twelve months, and thankfully although we are very busy we don’t have to! We love the variety of venues we shoot in, both in central London, and as with Theobalds, the home counties too.  So it’s definitely nice to visit this premier hotel and events venue every six months or so. Especially as it is just down the road.

However what made this particular day more than memorable was the lovely couple themselves and their friendly and accommodating families.

Our day started with documenting Jess’s preparations at her parents home in Totteridge north London. A little after the Rolls Royces had arrived courtesy of the ever popular Lords Cars, who we definitely recommend, we headed to the nearby church. The church in question is one we have visited often and that was St Andrew’s on Totteridge Lane. The church is notable for a few things, but to us the most interesting is that is its home in it’s grounds to London’s oldest tree a Yew estimated by experts from Kew Gardens to be 2000 years old!

This particular wedding ceremony was unusual too for a couple of reasons. Firstly the musical accompaniment throughout was from a great brass band called J50 Brass, this was because Jess was an accomplished trumpet player herself, so particularly meaningful. The second unusual occurrence was the fact I was told by the clergy on the day there was to be no photography whatsoever during the wedding ceremony. My attitude of course is to respect the conditions imposed on us, and generally we do, but I also had to take into consideration other peoples wishes. Bearing this in mind I conveniently but discreetly forgot this request, and employed my silent shutter and a couple of nice telephoto lenses. See the kiss photo for the incriminating evidence….

A twenty minute drive away was our reception venue Theobalds Park Hotel. A lovely place with a variety of rooms and areas to host a great wedding breakfast and drinks reception.

Theobalds itself has a long and distinguished history and I personally find it interesting to know the back story of the places we do our wedding photography in. It was actually a royal palace in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but was raised to the ground after the English Civil war. King James the first actually acquired it after swapping it for Hatfield Palace, and he liked it so much he eventually died there too!

A new building called The Cedars followed, and the owners even rebuilt Sir Christopher Wren’s original Temple Bar in the grounds. However that was returned to the city near St Paul’s Cathedral in 2001. As a side note we are photographing at St Paul’s itself later this year, and we will definitely be following their photography instructions! To cut a varied history short though, in the 1990s the whole estate was refurbished and became the De Veres owned venue we see and love today.

So Jess and Tom arrived in style in their vintage car to the sound of the brass band and welcoming champagne for all their guests. ImmediatelyI got to work doing some couple shots alone with them, while Joanna went off to photograph guests and the special details of the day.

I love the reception entrance and stairs at Theolalds and decided to do a mixture of flash and natural light shots. The weather on the day was grey skies and showers so between bursts I went outside when I could to do some friends and family shots.

Wedding breakfast speeches were straight away before food was served, and they were very amusing, especially Jess’s brother James as the best man. Later the couple cut their cake and danced their first dance to semi resident DJ Howard and naturally a great times was had by all.

I left on my imaginary horse from the royal palace, and galloped off in the Hertfordshire sunset. Ok, I retrieved my Honda CRV from the car park and drove home…

By David Green