A Church and Yurt Wedding with A Bell Tent Village, Rickshaw…
Laura & Dave

Here is Laura and Dave from late September, a visual treat if ever there was one.

Starting at the family home I found that there was not just a yurt for the evening but an entire village of bell tents for the guests. I’ve never seen anything like it and doubt I will again, at least not for a while anyway!

I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect it to be like this. Part of what I do is to get an impression of what the day will be like in advance of the wedding so I can sleep on what I ‘ve found out and build an image of the day with rough expectations of things to come. This one though, was beyond my imagination.

All the boxes were ticked, gorgeous weather, wonderful family, huge attention to detail with personal handmade touches everywhere.

Laura arrived at Marden church by Rickshaw, (as you do) and after the ceremony we all headed back to Laura’s parents for the reception.

When we got back the Routemaster bus and Rickshaw were used for photos so we could go right in and party. Guests were playing games, using the Space Hoppers and generally enjoying themselves in the time leading up to dinner in the Yurt.

Speeches came first and dinner marked the start of a gradual slope upwards into insanity on the dancefloor.

We took some more photos at sunset and almost lost Laura head first into a ditch after a badly calculated lift but we survived and all that remained was a MASSIVE party.

But before I go on to that……

I know a lot of people read my blog, existing couples, those looking for a photographer and other photographers too and there’s something special with this wedding I want to draw your attention to.

There are very few photos here of Laura and Dave looking directly at the camera in this post. Still, I’ve lots of gorgeous photos of them right?

Laura and Dave told me they hate having their photo taken, absolutely and totally. It’s a common thing across couples. They want to look natural in the pictures but point a camera at them and they feel awkward and on show.

The difference here is that they ‘laughed out their awkward’. They giggled away the nervousness and did what every couple should do during their wedding photos… they focused on each other and forgot about me.

It doesn’t matter if that means they’re looking at each other and thinking ‘OMG I love you more than marshmallows’ or ‘OMG this is so cringe, save me by doing something stupid’ – The end result will be the same. If you are naturally into each other the photos will look natural too. When you love someone you’ll want to put your arms around them in a genuine way and that’s when the real photos happen.

I was with Laura and Dave until 2:30am, it was so crazy and the dancefloor was like a mini rave for the best part of 5 hours. I’ve never seen anything like it!

It did help to have lots of sugar available and several types of Gin cocktail on tap though and as there were around 120 doctors present there were no casualties!

It was also the first time the bouquet was thrown back to the bride and Laura caught it from 6 metres away. Nice.

Here are some more images from their day, there are around 80 here but they received 1018. There was just so much to shoot!