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Big Day Weddings

David and Joanna Green are Time Out recommended, award winning fulltime London wedding photographers. Mum and dad to four wonderful children and three family dogs. Lovers of all things photographic and wedding related. Covering Greater London and destination weddings in the UK and Europe.

Dorchester Hotel wedding photographer piano image

London Dorchester Hotel Wedding

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding VenuesOne Comment

Camden town hall wedding ceremony

Wedding season is in full swing now, though to be honest it never really stopped throughout the winter! One of our favourite venues to work at whatever the time of year is when we are at a London Dorchester hotel wedding. The last big day we were photographing at this iconic venue the total guest count was about three hundred, this time it was a lovely intimate affair with just eight very special guests. Zaira originally from Brazil and Daniel from Paris France, wanted just close family to share their wedding day and in many ways it made the day even more magical.

When we first spoke I (David) felt an instant rapport with them which is so important for both sides to make for a truly successful experience. Although it is not strictly necessary, we would generally advise meeting with any potential wedding photographer before making a final decision on who shares such a momentous day with you.

confetti photo at Camden town hall

We have spoke before about the history and glamorous heritage of the Dorchester in a previous blog post here: Dorchester Hotel Wedding Photographers

The Pavilion and Penthouse at the Dorchester were the destinations for the reception and quite frankly in London they don’t get much more exclusive than those. I was looking at an article in Hello magazine from 2012 the week before, about guitarist Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones and his wedding, and saw that that was exactly where he had decided to celebrate! He had two best men, little known names in the world of entertainment: Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney. Actually, over the time we have have photographed at the hotel we have encountered quite a few household names. The only stars we are really interested in though are the ones we are photographing!

Dorchester Hotel wedding London

London Dorchester hotel wedding shot

The wedding ceremony took place at Camden Town Hall which has special memories for us as this was where we registered the births of our first two children while we were living in Islington. We always find the registers working there to be really good with people. After the town hall and sone family shots and confetti we took the wedding car with Martin the video man from Special Occasion Videos to the opposite bank of the Thames from the Houses of Parliament. Zaira and Daniel had told us this was an area they really loved and wanted to feature in their final wedding images. After a very pleasant twenty or so minutes there we headed for the Dorchester and the waiting champagne and canopies in the beautiful Pavilion rooms upstairs.

Penthouse at London Dorchester wedding

Read what the couple had to say about their London wedding photography experience here: London Dorchester Hotel feedback

By David Green

 

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Andaz Hotel London wedding shot

Best London Wedding Photographers

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding Venues2 Comments

The internet is full of lists. We haven’t seen one for best London wedding photographers, but we are guessing it is probably something couples looking for great imagery for their big day may well type in when they search. That got us thinking, what makes anyone the best wedding photographer in any particular area. Well to cut a long blog post short, and the conclusion we came to, it is very much in the eye and intuition of the beholder!

London Gherkin wedding kiss black and white image

For instance if you value a particular style of photography over another, chances are you will have a natural and understandable bypass towards that image genre. Websites are full of buzz words trying to describe their owners varying approaches: reportage and documentary style, fine art, dramatic, classic, natural and spontaneous, unobtrusive, and so on. What does all this mean, does it make the photographer stand out from the rest? How much of this is just something that reads well on a site. There are definately some brilliant wedding photographers out there in the big wide world, and obviously some are more affordable than others. The general rule of you get what you pay for on the whole seems to us pretty accurate in this industry though.

London_Street_Wedding_Scene

Some are good, some are great, some are way better at marketing than others. Perhaps they live on page one of Google or Bing or whatever search engine is used. The emerging genius may well be on page five and no one ever finds them. Undoubtedly that happens and all the current research shows that people rarely look past the first two pages. Are the best wedding photographers on page one? No, but we suspect the busiest are! So what should a prospective couple look for. Well, firstly something that appeals to your gut feelings, and we are not talking food here! If the images you see move you, excite and inspire you, then you are probably more than half way there. As long as the images were shot at real weddings in realistic time scales with no models involved. Unfortunately that sometimes happens. Not with us though!

Smithfield wedding photographers

Next, are these people within your budget, or if they are not, would you mind finding the extra money to make sure these are the ones for your big day. Are they flexible style wise, or only shoot one way. For instance, if you value a reportage style would the photographer be comfortable capturing more formal or traditional portraits during the day. Would they recreate a photo idea you had found somewhere else for example on a popular site like Pinterest. Would they be amenable to shoot for you in a variety of different genres. Being open minded to these factors could contribute to them being deemed “the best” certainly for your needs. That would be way more relevant than a third party list or a search engine placing, or certainly one of those pay per click ads that appear at the top and side of every page you look at.

Richmond bus stop wedding shot

Other things to think about could be, have you met the person? Some London wedding photographers are much more relaxed with people than others. They really need to not just get on well with yourselves, but also ALL of your guests. Sometimes that “unobtrusive” documentary style advertised could be the carefully chosen words of a socially awkward but well-meaning person who loves playing with cameras! Of course there are folks that tick all the right boxes in all image styles too.

Lords cricket wedding shot

If possible we will always recommend meeting your wedding photographer in person, as this could be the final deciding factor in who is best for you. And that really is the essence of what makes for the title of this piece “Best London wedding photographers.” There is no definitive impartial list, it is about what is ultimately right for you and taking into account some of the areas we have mentioned here.

Love in Hoxton wedding shot

We hope it is us, but as always of course, the choice will be yours and yours alone. To read a little more of our personal approach to the big day take a look at the section here: David and Joanna

London Zoo wedding shot

To get a feel for the variety and style of imagery we can produce you can either search further on the blog. or check out our dedicated image galleries here: Wedding Galleries

Dorchester Hotel wedding Israeli dance

Images shown here are really the tip of a very large ten year iceberg! There’s the Gherkin building at the top, Smithfield market, a bus stop in Richmond, Lord’s Cricket Ground, a bit of rundown Hoxton at night, London Zoo, The Dorchester Hotel and St Pancras Station, to name just a few of the venues we have done recently in and around London.

You can read about some of these London weddings featured here in a group of previous blog posts listed below:

Weddings at the Gherkin: Gherkin wedding photographer

London Zoo celebrations: London Zoo wedding photographers

St Pancras: London St Pancras wedding

Dorchester Hotel weddings: London Dorchester Hotel wedding

Lord’s Cricket Ground: Lords Cricket Ground Wedding

Smithfield Market: Smithfield Wedding Photographer

Central London Weddings

 

By David Green

 

St Pancras station wedding

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London Gherkin Wedding Film

By Wedding VenuesNo Comments

Once again we wanted to give credit to another great wedding supplier that we have worked with regularly, and feel would be worthwhile for couples to take a look at. Here is a wedding film produced by Martin at Special Occassion Videos who shot alongside us recently for Ankush and Nikki’s big day at the iconic London Gherkin Building.
We documented this special day previously in a related blog post that can be read here: Gherkin Wedding Photographer

It still makes us smile how hard it was to get into the building through security, even though we were the official photographers! Take a look at the film and you can once again see myself and Joanna hard at work – we are the good looking ones…

Martin’s company website: Special Occasion Videos

By David Green

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Landmark Hotel Wedding Video

By Barnet Wedding Photographers, Wedding VenuesNo Comments

As well as getting to work with some fantastic couples and exciting and varied venues as London wedding photographers, we also get to work with other great professionals in the industry too. We wanted to give a “heads up” to couples looking for videographers and cinematographers with a couple of recommendations for other suppliers we regularly shoot alongside. One of those is the man and wife team of John and Rachel De Rienzo of De Rienzo Films in London. You can find their website here: De Rienzo Films

We photographed together recently at the famous Italian Church in Clerkenwell, then around central London and finally finished up at the world renowned Landmark Hotel for Giulia and Antonio’s wedding and reception. A truely special and traditional London Italian wedding day. Watch the movie and you will be able to see myself and Joanna hard at work on the big day. Our related blog post and photos can be accessed here: Landmark Hotel Wedding Photographer

By David Green

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