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Big Day Weddings

London Mandarin Oriental wedding photographer

Chinese President follows in the footsteps of London Wedding Photographers – Big Day Weddings

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding VenuesNo Comments

It has been very interesting for us both as we sit here editing our latest London wedding today, to watch the coverage in the background of Xi Jinping’s state visit to the capital. It feels almost like the Chinese president follows in the footsteps of London wedding photographers Big Day Weddings! Firstly he is staying at ther London Mandarin Oriental Hotel where very recently we photographed a lovely intimate wedding. That’s the featured image here on this post.  On that particular day staff showed us the “Royal” entrance at the back of the hotel where royalty and visiting dignatories could enter and exit. This was featured on BBC news coverage and included here are a couple of shots of that very entrance that Xi Jinping has been using. The only difference is that for these visits they construct a temporary overhead structure by the distinctive black gates. It was the Chinese who requested previously to move the nearby lamp post to the side, as it kept getting in the way on this drop off and in point! Also we see the red carpet at the Mandarin Oriental was rolled out,  photo included, from our wedding coverage, and apparently this is the same one used for all such high profile visits and weddings. So we treaded that carpet first before Mr Jinping. Read about it here: London Mandarin Oriental Wedding Photography

Newly weds walk through Hyde Park gates

laying the red carpet at Mandarin Oriental Hotel

Secondly a lot of the action is taking place at Horse Guards parade, which is a where we frequently photograph when wedding couples spend sone time alone with us for some extra memorable shots, away from the wedding party and reception. There’s an example image from Aishe and Habib’s lovely day below.

Love at horse guards parade photo

Finally we see that the Chinese president is also going to visit Imperial College London, and it was only days ago that we photographed Nicki and Stephen’s big day in Imperial’s premier event venue 58 Princes Gate, which you can read about on the blog here: London Kensington Wedding Photographers There’s a shot from the venue below as well. That’s one of the great perks of photographing central London weddings in that we get to work at tremendous venues, and also access areas not normally available to the general public.

Kensington wedding photographers

You can read and watch constantly updated coverage of the Chinese president’s state visit on the BBC News website linked here: BBC News coverage of Chinese President’s London state visit

By David Green

wedding couple with London love sign photo

Rock My Wedding rates Big Day Weddings as “fabulous” and “striking” and “contemporary natural and fashion inspired”

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding VenuesNo Comments

Read all about it, read all about it! The famous cry of the newspaper seller of old has been replace by a well placed tweet, a facebook update and a blog post on a website. It’s an ever changing world and that’s no bad thing. In our ten years of London and destination wedding photography we’ve seen a massive change in the industry, and that’s been in a very positive direction in our opinion. Everyone has had to raise their game continuously or be left behind. Not just in camera and lighting craft, but also the way you promote your wedding business. It used to be you paid your money and put an advert in Yellow Pages, and worked on word of mouth and perhaps networked a little or a lot. Then it became essential you got yourself a website, bowed down to King Google, learned social media, tweeted, blogged, updated everything and the like while still finding time to photograph your weddings and meet new couples! But you know what? That new knowledge, change and fresh horizons has been really exciting and part of the joy of being well known London wedding photographers. Plus we got to indulge in our love of people as well as capturing incredible days in couple’s and their friends and families lives.

Rock my wedding Big Day weddings reviewAs part of this change in the industry was the rise of the dedicated wedding blog, not run by photographers, but by people with an interest in all things wedding, and/or entrepreneurs who realised this was a commercially viable area to blog and advertise services in. Now in the UK the most powerful and popular of these seems to be at the time of writing, Rock My Wedding or RMW as it is sometimes referred to, and rightly so. It has high standards, is innovative, and always on the cutting edge of current and high quality wedding photographers and all other related suppliers in the industry.

We were therefore delighted to be reviewed by them (we’ve put a screen grab of their article above) and to receive their seal of approval. The link to the article is here if  you fancy reading it in situ: RMW rates Big Day Weddings

To quote the first line: “The fabulous images captured by Big Day Weddings just exude the love and laughter of a wedding day in a contemporary natural and fashion inspired style.”

The included images in the article are from these related weddings and posts: Smithfield Wedding Photographer

London Southbank Engagement Shoot

Islington Town Hall Wedding

Ultimate London engagement shoot graphic

Clerkenwell wedding dress in the wind

Smithfield wedding photographers

London Eye Wedding Photographers image

 

By David Green

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

London Gherkin wedding photographer

On top of the world – Gherkin Wedding

By London Wedding Photographer, Wedding VenuesNo Comments

Just a quick mini post as we sit here editing Nikki and Kush’s spectacular London Gherkin wedding. It’s Saturday night, we should be out somewhere as it’s the first free one we have had in so long where we are not actually photographing a wedding in or around the London and Home counties areas! But it’s cosy here in the studio, and that Californian red wine sure is nice…That shot was taken by David, with Joanna holding and focusing a fresnel lens spotlight on the couple for extra drama, one of many variations. Blog post coming, back to the editing, we can go out for dinner in the week…

🙂 by David Green

Central London Wedding Photographers “Big Day Weddings”

By Barnet Wedding Photographers, London Wedding PhotographerNo Comments

Central London Wedding Photographers

Central London Wedding Photographer Header Image

Well when you live in a suburb of London, what do you term yourself as? Barnet photographer, central London wedding photographers, Enfield, Mill Hill, Home Counties? – this is the region we live in but the area we cover ranges from Greater London to Europe! Recently David spent a day with Peter Prior a previous Cosmopolitan magazine Wedding Photographer of the Year. Peter works anywhere (he’s very very expensive by the way…) and told David he rarely meets couples before their wedding day. We on the other hand actively encourage people to meet their wedding photographers because they will be spending such a lot of time around them on their special day.

Bride looks from hotel window at St Pauls Cathedral on wedding day

Wedding couple walk in middle of road in Mayfair London

London Routemaster Bus Wedding

Bridesmaids sit on tank at London Islington wedding day image

Husband and wife near Bank Station on London wedding day

For some couples this is a decider, they want someone local to them they can visit easily, some times these wedddings are nearby, sometimes further afield. What if you live in Mayfair or Richmond for example (areas we do a lot of weddings in) and if you looked only physically locally to yourselves – perhaps you typed Central London Wedding Photographers into google, then you could well be doing yourself a disfavour, because a Barnet based wedding photographer could actually be your best choice! Where is this leading? Well actually all we were originally going to say today was how much we enjoy photography in Central London! For the trained eye there are incredible opportunites in the most unusual places for fresh exciting and memorable photos. Thing is, for the average wedding couple you may only have about twenty-five minutes allocated in your schedule to make those pictures, the photographer needs to have quick thinking creative vision, get the job done, but be relaxing and fun too, so another good reason to hire full time professionals to do that job for you. These are some of  the reasons we believe we are Time Out Recommended for London. We’ve now covered so many London streets, areas and landmarks with our wedding photography, we feel like we could moonlight sometimes as tour guides! So anyway,  here’s a few pics…

To see over 100 wedding images just click on the link here: GALLERIES OR just scroll through this blog, it’s full of images! By David Green.

Chaing Cross Winter Wedding London

Marylebone Town Hall Wedding Graphic

London phone box wedding

By David Green

 

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