5 things you must do if you're asked to photograph a wedding at the last minute

Chris and Maria 

1.     Say "yes" and rearrange anything else you have on, I promise you it will be worth it. On Saturday I got a call at 12.30pm to see if I could stand in for a no-show photographer at a big wedding. After a moment's hesitation (we were just about to go out for the afternoon for my daughter's 13th birthday), I agreed to do it and asked "where" and "when?". "In Chester in half an hour!" 

      

      I think the bride and I set off for the church at the same time, the bride in a chauffeur driven vintage car and me in a husband-driven Subaru. The bride looking radiant in a stunning dress and veil, with beautifully styled hair and flawless make up; me with barely dry, un- straightened hair, no make up (!) and a top I had regretted buying but was clean and not creased. Not my usual wedding photographer "uniform".

2.     Be prepared! Every time you finish a job, put your batteries on charge and format your memory cards, just in case you ever need to be an emergency wedding photographer! This is now a new rule of mine as it would have saved me a lot of stress on Saturday! 

      Whilst I panicked over the state of batteries and cards in the car, my three companions made helpful comments to keep me calm; Sam: "you'll look like Mad Eye Moody running into the church late..." This is a character from Harry Potter, but you don't need to know that to get the idea! Nic: "you should always keep your batteries charged and cards formatted just in case…"

3.     Keep calm and do what you're good at. I've done enough weddings and events now to know what I'm doing, despite not having time to do any preparation, never mind not having even met the bride and groom. They were quite easy to spot, in front of the alter, quite spruced up, talking to a guy wearing white robes. As I started shooting, I was picking up information on the hoof: 

• this was a wedding attended by a lot of people from Spain (the priest kept dropping in the odd Spanish word);
• it was a Catholic wedding (we were still there after 20 minutes);
• it was a very big wedding (both sides of the church were packed);
• this was going to be a lively gig (lots of laughter and spontaneous dancing and singing after the service, especially Y Viva Espagna!). This meant it was a delight to photograph, with so much Latin emotion and expressiveness, unlike us reserved Brits.

"A lively gig" with lots of spontaneous dancing

4.     Don't be afraid to ask for help. At the first opportunity I had a quick word with the videographers (Tom & Tom from Silk Wedding Films) and sorted a lift to the hotel and got a quick view of the schedule for the day. TomTom were great all day, making sure I knew when things were happening, especially when we would get fed! 

      When we arrived at the hotel everything was happening so fast, the light was fading and I hadn't had chance to suss out how to pose the bride and groom in the car. So I asked the chauffeur for his advice. He was more than happy to help as he wanted his car to look great in the pictures.

Great pose in the car

5.     Put the bride and groom's needs first above everything else. It must have been awful for them to have the stress of the photographer not showing up, but I just assured them that they would still have amazing pictures by which to remember their wedding. I tried to find out if anyone had been taking pictures prior to the church service, as I knew that the happy couple would want a complete record of their big day in the album. I've now got a great selection of photos of the bride getting ready before the ceremony and I'm going to pick the best ones and give them a professional makeover so that they can be included.

Chris and Maria with Mark, the hotel General Manager - the man who made the call at 12.30pm

I really enjoyed being an emergency wedding photographer and would do it again in a flash. I didn't have any time to get nervous and it was really rewarding to be told umpteen times that I was a super hero and had "saved the day". I always knew those Wonder Woman pants would come in useful one day! I really can't wait to show the final photographs to Chris and Maria, as they were an amazing couple, so laid back, lots of fun and totally in love, of course.

By Jane Burkinshaw, Emergency Wedding Photographer

Summer Wedding at Nunsmere Hall Hotel, Cheshire (by Cheshire wedding photographer Jane Burkinshaw)

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Now, we've got that out of the way, back to Louise and Neil's wonderful indian summer wedding! Click on any image to see a larger version.

The venue was Nunsmere Hall Hotel and it couldn't have looked more beautiful on this sunny afternoon in early September.

Nunsmere Hall Hotel

The fair weather meant that the wedding party could mingle on the terrace and in the gardens and also that the ceremony could take place outside in the stunning grounds of the hotel. It was great to be able to take photographs in lovely natural light - any wedding photographer's dream!

The groom and best man were welcoming guests on the terrace and I took them away to the quiet of an avenue of trees to get some shots of all the men in their suits. This area overlooks the lake and is very shady and peaceful apart from the occasional motor boat! It's a favourite spot of mine for wedding images as the light is beautiful and the line of trees makes for an impressive back drop.

Meanwhile the bride had finished getting ready in the bridal suite upstairs and her extremely proud father accompanied her down the stairs, through the hotel and into the garden, where the guests and groom were eagerly awaiting her arrival! She looked stunning and I particularly like these shots in black and white as they look so classic and timeless.

If I were to ever get married again (don't tell my husband I said that!) I would want the ceremony to be outside - it was a beautiful setting with the late afternoon sunshine starting to cast long shadows across the lawn.

Drinks and canapes were served on the lawn afterwards and it was a great time to get relaxed, candid shots of everyone congratulating Louise and Neil and enjoying themselves.

I always feel guilty prising the bride and groom away from this post ceremony period but it's a good time to get some shots of them together before all the group shots and the wedding breakfast. And the newly wed couple are always very relaxed and super happy so it's easy to get candid, fun pictures of them - as shown by these of Louise and Neil.

The newly weds and their guests danced the night away but didn't require me to stay so I sneaked off to spend a lovely first weekend in our caravan. But I was itching to get to my computer to start editing the photos and start the all important album. They opted for a coffee table style photo book that could be left out and looked at, rather than being hidden away in a box. It's a really special moment when you first present the couple with their finished album and Louise and Neil both said it took them right back to that very special day. This is what it's all about, as far as I'm concerned, knowing that I've given them memories that they can re-visit and share time and again.

And so we come to the end of this blog about a picture perfect wedding in an idyllic setting, but at the considerable risk of sounding cheesy, this not the end but just the beginning of married life together for Louise and Neil!!

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!

Made in Cheshire

Dinner, bed and breakfast at a luxury country hotel and kids on sleepovers – fantastic! As soon as offspring and dog were despatched, we headed off to Nunsmere Hall Hotel with a guilty sense of freedom and anticipation of an evening of fine food and wine.

This was likely to be a bit of a busman’s holiday for me, having promised to take a few photographs of the food, as it was a rather special event – a Made in Cheshire evening with all the food sourced from within the county, even including staple ingredients such as flour and salt. As people gathered in the bar and on the terrace in the warm evening sunshine, they were offered a champagne flute of locally made, chilled cider. I, in the meantime, was nipping in and out of the kitchen photographing Chef for the evening, Mark Fletcher, putting the finishing touches to the canapés of scotch quails eggs and welsh toast. I did find time to sample both the cider and canapés and was very pleasantly surprised by just how refreshing and enjoyable cider can be, as an alternative to the more traditional champagne.

I had spent some time chatting with Mark, usually the Sous Chef at Nunsmere, but very much in charge of the Made in Cheshire evening, and he had told me with some pride how he had personally sourced all of the ingredients from suppliers within a thirty mile radius of Nunsmere Hall. He came into the bar to welcome the diners and to talk enthusiastically and humorously about the menu, despite being much more comfortable behind the scenes in the busy, hot kitchen. I don’t envy anyone working in such a heated and pressured environment – it would be my idea of hell – but the kitchen staff seem to thrive on it. Behind the swing doors it was noisy with the banging and clattering of pans, instructions were shouted across the kitchen, there were people rushing about and all seemed rather chaotic to me. But then as a course was plated up and Chef shouted “service!” suddenly all fell into place, waiters and waitresses appeared as if by magic and calmly ferried the dishes out to the dining room. Mark took a gulp of tea from his West Ham mug (I promised to fit in a mention!) and then moved onto preparing the next course.

Out in the restaurant everyone was enjoying the gazpacho with a selection of breads made from locally milled flour. This was followed by a visually stunning goat’s cheese and beetroot dish, which brought out the geek in my husband: “it’s a cone bisected by a plane, which would create an ellipse if sliced across...”. Personally I just thought it looked amazing and tasted divine! Each course was accompanied by a different wine and we had a lively conversation about how hard it is to find wine that tastes as good as those in a restaurant. I think we were underestimating the skill required to match wine with food and then serve it at the right temperature in the correct glass. The goat’s cheese was followed by trout caught locally.

By now my fellow diners and long suffering husband were getting used to me dashing away from the table between courses – at least the presence of my camera reassured them that I hadn’t just got a very weak bladder! In the kitchen the medallions of beef were being plated up and Mark’s two young sous chefs for the evening were carefully adding the vegetables. The attention to detail in the presentation of food never fails to amaze me – as an artist bends in concentration, nose almost touching the canvas, so a chef leans over each dish, carefully positioning each item and then adding jus or sauce with a flourish like a signature. The end result looked almost too good to eat, but you could soon hear the scraping of cutlery on empty plates and the rise in chatter that signals the end of a course. We were enjoying the company of the people around us, the majority being strangers to us beforehand. The couple next to us explained that they had bid for the Made in Cheshire Evening (plus bed and breakfast) at a charity auction, with Steven, at the time, under the illusion he was bidding for a balloon ride and egging on his partner, Jane, to bid increasingly higher!

As we enjoyed a short break before dessert, we could see a figure with a torch roaming around the edges of the garden and eventually setting up a white sheet and bright lamp on the lawn. This turned out to be Fungal Punk, a familiar figure at Nunsmere Hall, preparing for a late night moth hunt. I don’t know about anyone else, but in my experience a restaurant dinner has never been followed by a midnight search for Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies to you and me), but more on that in a moment! Dessert was a fruit salad served with locally made elderflower ice cream , followed by a fantastic selection of Cheshire cheeses. I could have grazed on the cheese and sipped port until bedtime but the moths were gathering outside to put on a show for us. Actually it turned out to be a little too late and a little too bright (almost full moon) for them and they had to be enticed out with a mixture of wine and treacle daubed on tree trunks. We must have made a strange sight weaving our slightly tipsy way through the tree line along the edges of the lawn, stopping to peer at moths and spiders in the light of Fungal Punk’s torch (the only torch (!) and we lost a few diners along the way!).

Back to the bar, laughing about our midnight walk and a quick brandy before bed. This was a delicious, fun, and very entertaining evening and nothing like hard work for me.

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!

Nunsmere Hall Hotel

I first became acquainted with Nunsmere Hall Hotel when my husband booked a surprise overnight stay for our wedding anniversary in 2004. We enjoyed a delicious meal in an intimate dining room and loved our slightly quirky room with its own little staircase and very comfy and luxurious bed. The next morning it was very cold, clear and frosty and after breakfast we strolled around the gardens, taking photographs of the white coated lawns raked with long shadows from the line of trees in front of the lake. Little did I realise at that time that my career would take such a different direction that I would end up photographing the hotel in a professional capacity a few years later. Through my portrait work I met the manager of the hotel, Mark, and his family last year and have photographed them several times now, with the hotel making a spectacular location for the shoots. When we had the so called “snow events” in February Mark invited me to photograph the hotel and grounds and will be featuring the above shot on the cover of the 2009 winter brochure. Other shots have made it into Cheshire Life, one as an advertisement and another (see left) accompanying a feature on top Cheshire restaurants. Mark and his team at Nunsmere Hall are highly professional, but also very friendly and informal and I always enjoy my visits there, whether for business or for pleasure!

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!