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Happy couple photographed at Tower Bridge in London

London Bishopsgate Wedding Photographers

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding Venues2 Comments

St Helen’s Bishopsgate, Threadneedles Hotel and Tower Bridge

When you are a London wedding photographer it helps to have the eyes of a tourist or visitor to our great city when you are working. By that we mean looking at what may be very familiar to you in a fresh and unique way, each time a well known place is the location you find yourself on a wedding day. As a busy in demand photographer, you owe it to each and every couple to be as fresh and sharp sighted with your image making on their big day as humanly possible. When Joanna and I formed Big Day Weddings ten years ago, the first question we asked ourselves was “if we were looking for a wedding photographer to capture our special day, what would we want from them?”  We try and bring the answers we found for that particular question  to each and every once in a lifetime event we cover. One such area we have worked many times that is still as fresh as the first time is Bishopsgate and its surrounding streets.

Tower Bridge wedding photographer London

This particular day we started at the lovely Threadneedles Hotel just behind the London Stock Exchange and the Bank of England, on wait for it…Threadneedle Street. Kim and Michael as regulars at St Helen’s church in Bishopsgate naturally wanted to get married there, with their familiar clergy Andrew Sachs conducting the service. Bride and groom both got ready at the Threadneedles hotel, making sure their paths didn’t cross, and Joanna and myself flitted between the two of them to get the full story of the start of their day.

Wedding procession St Helens Bishopsgate

St Helens Bishopsgate wedding image

The service at St Helens was a very heartfelt affair, and after a mixture of reportage photography and some formals too, we caught a wedding taxi to explore Butlers Wharf and Tower Bridge area for forty minutes, while the wedding party made their way by foot the short distance to the hotel for the reception. We love photographing wedding couples in the Tower Bridge area, which again is an place we have worked in and around many many times. After our fun and games there, and some good hearted banter with our London cab driver, we all headed back to the Threadneedles for Kim and Michael’s champagne reception.

Threadneedles hotel wedding photography

laughter at Threadneedles Hotel wedding

 

wedding photo at Butlers Wharf

marriage vows at St Helens Bishopsgate London

bride getting ready at Threadneedles Hotel

You can see we used a variety of lenses here from fish eyes to exotic fixed focal length portrait lenses. Some people have already asked “is that kissing shot at Tower Bridge real?” Well, to do an Ed Milliband: “Hell Yes!” All we did was boost the blues in an already dramatic sky. For the shot of Kim in the lift lobby area of the hotel, Joanna held a Fresnel lens spotlight over Kim while I zoomed in from a far and used my “secret” tactics to create a reaction to give the image some extra dynamism. All good fun!

To see some more images taken in and around Bishopsgate including the fantastic Leadenhall Market and our special wedding day trespassing shot on the Lloyds Building, then take a look at our dedicated galleries: Wedding Galleries

By David Green

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Loving London Weddings

By London Wedding PhotographerNo Comments

Well as we sit here editing the last two weekends weddings, we began to think why is it ten years on that we are still loving London weddings just as much as when we started. We think it began quite some time ago….in Camden and Islington to be precise. Camden for Joanna as this, along with Kentish Town, was where she grew up and went to school. For David, Islington and West Hampstead is where he lived after moving down from sunny Yorkshire, and it is London where three of our four children were born. I say “he” for David, but I David am actually writing this! I’m just never quite sure how to talk about myself and Joanna: third person, first person, who knows? I know I’m not a journalist or a novelist, but I have to keep writing blog posts to keep google interested in us! I’d like to be photographing weddings and nothing else but life on the internet dictates that wedding photographers must blog, it is one of the holy search engine commandments apparently. Anyway….before we became dedicated London wedding photographers a decade ago, we spent our weekends pushing prams around the city soaking up its sights i.e. museums, culture, architecture and history. Photographing our children against a great of this backdrop and then realising that perhaps we could think of a career change and not just have our offspring as subjects began the process! It’s not often that you can turn your hobby and passion into a business. So it transpired that David opened a portrait studio in north London first which was incredibly busy in 2006 to 2008, but we decided that wedding photography especially in and around London and the home counties was what really motivated us and satisfied us creatively. We had the pleasure (and still do occasionally) of being able to shoot fashion and commercial photography with well know and iconic brands, such as Ralph Lauren and De Beers Diamond Jewellers. There is something incredibly challenging but fulfilling documenting a couple’s love filled day in what we consider to be the greatest city on the planet. It’s exhilarating and its exhausting (we only feel it the next day though – phew…) and it is incredibly specialist being a London wedding photographer so many varied skills to learn, but that’s another blog post. And there we have it, a very potted history of the last ten years, a decade on and still loving London weddings.

Here is a related post: Best London Wedding Photographers

Now if your wedding day happens to be in Barnet or Kent or Hertfordshire or St Tropez we go there too, just so you know we are not completely London centric!

By David Green

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London street scene contact page wedding image

Marylebone Town Hall Wedding

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding VenuesNo Comments

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:

Old Marylebone Town Hall wedding image

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

Marylebone_town_hall_wedding_photographer

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

Love1
Brocket Hall wedding image

Brocket Hall wedding story

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding VenuesNo Comments

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

 

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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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