Big Day Weddings

As a London wedding photographer sooner or later you are going to be working at one of the capital’s most iconic wedding venues. That place featured in countless news articles showing the marriages of various stars of screen, music and public life is non other than Old Marylebone Town Hall. We have photographed there so many times that as I type this post, I realise we should feature some of those experiences in a series of forthcoming pieces! However, today’s article is one in our series of the “stories behind the images.” At the moment this particular wedding photo is featured on our contact page and has created a lot of positive comment from wedding couples when we have first spoken with them. This day I (David) worked on my own, because the entire wedding party consisted of just four people! Although small we all had a great and very relaxed time. I really felt part of the special moment because of the intimacy of the ceremony and our fun time together afterwards. Naturally I did the Old Marylebone Town hall wedding photographer type shots you would expect on the steps and so forth, but I also wanted to create something quirky that reflected the personalities of the people involved. I had remembered from previous wedding days there that there were some great old garage doors I liked in a street behind us. Best man was quite a macho type of guy, so I gave him the wedding bouquet to play with, and I noticed his partner the bridesmaid liked playing with her phone, so that was simple! All that was left was to use one of my “secret” tactics to get the couple reacting with each other to help tell the story and give life to the image. I took four shots of various stages of the reaction, all were quite different. All of the images “worked” but this one was my personal favourite.

Here’s a couple of other images from the day at Marylebone below:

Take a look at over one hundred images in our galleries here: Wedding Galleries

We are always interested in the background and history of the places we photograph. We make it part of our preparation for the big day as we also like to see what others have achieved or celebrated there before.

The design of old Marylebone Town hall was actually the result of a competition held in 1911 and won by Sir Edwin Cooper. Built using Portland stone it was completed between 1914 and 1920.

As well as conducting the usual civic business one would expect of a town hall, it is it’s use as a grand and varied  registry office in the heart of London that has made it so famous around the world. Paul and Linda McCartney were married here, Ringo from the Beatles, Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit and countless other “A” list starts including every couple that we have photographed there!

Not to put you off but it is the capital’s busiest wedding venue with as many as twelve weddings and civil partnerships on a peak season Saturday. Still it feels special every time we work there and long may that continue.

By David Green

We wrote on facebook a couple of days ago that we thought our kettle was going to explode – such was the amount of wedding meetings we have had recently! What struck us though in those meetings was the fantastic feedback that we have had on some of the images featured on our website, so we have decided to occasionally write a blog post on the story behind some of those wedding shots.

The photo featured here was taken at Rebecca and Anthony’s wedding at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, a venue we have worked at quite a few times in the last few years, and beautiful it is too. The shot is in the library there and was taken by David stood discreetly near the registrar. In an intimate setting such as this it is always a case of finding the right balance between capturing the moment and being as invisible as possible during the ceremony. We can’t remember exactly what was said in the seconds before the image was captured, but it involved Rebecca’s father mispronouncing something we think. Dad Ricky George has been a local Hertfordshire celebrity for some time now, as it was he as a professional footballer who scored the winning goal for Hereford United against Newcastle in the FA Cup in 1971, a massive act of football giant killing. However we only mention this as footie nerds and truly the star of the show on the day was daughter “Becks” herself. She is even more a star since we discovered she lives round the corner from us.

We should also point our that the two bridesmaids you can also see in the photo are married themselves, and we photographed their London and Hertfordshire weddings too.

Have a confession though…during the meal I (David) went away and had a race around the grounds on one of the golf buggies. Please don’t tell the venue. I’m not usually badly behaved.

Here’s a related Brocket Hall post: Brocket Hall wedding photographers

By David Green