A Lancing College Chapel and Great Ote Hall Wedding
Sarah & Alistair

Lancing College Chapel Wedding

So Sarah and Alistair, crikey, where do I begin…. a standard all dayer, just myself on this one, Sarah readied herself along with the bridesmaids and exceptionally pretty flower girls at her parents home in Shoreham of which they had a lovely garden that I took full advantage of for photos.

I was introduced to the family tortoises who kindly allowed me to stage the shot above.

It’s nice to work where there is plenty of light, when I do, images have a radiant glow to them that really is near impossible to replicate artificially and this showed in the resulting photos from the day. ‘Just right weather’ is a 1 in 10 wedding thing.

Sarah’s parents (Hello Jan and John), have had a blue Triumph Herald and a Morris 1000 in the family for years. If I remember rightly Sarah learnt to drive in one of them and these cars ended up being the wedding transport. You can’t get more personal than that and it was amusing watching John knocking the seat position back with a plank of wood!

Once ready the bridal party left to go to Lancing College Chapel – If you’ve never been there, please go, it’s a sight to behold.

With a lot of church weddings, chapel weddings, cathedrals etc the vicars can be well….irregular. Sometimes you can move about, others not. Sometimes you have to stay at the back and a couple of weeks back one vicar told me to:

a) stay at the back.

b) not move around and…

c) not to take any pictures, none at all as the couple had two people doing video and I ‘wasn’t needed’ – True story.

So I’ll take this opportunity to warn ALL COUPLES that I’ve heard it a hundred times before, ‘Our vicar is lovely’ – Yes they are, but, because of the amount of new faces trying their hand at wedding photography they are giving the pros a bad name and so laying down tougher rules.

That’s even if they went to school with your Dad and even with guests two rows back from the front making loads of noise with their compact cameras…

In the case with Lancing College Chapel I had to stay at the back of it. Lancing Chapel is big, HUGE in fact. so I was shooting at 400mm the whole time, handheld and that’s tricky.

Once you’ve got back up after being bowled over by the beauty of the Chapel you can enjoy a beautiful wedding ceremony…..and it is stunning there. The war memorial walk and gardens after were just perfect for photos and I managed to nail a group shot outside fitting the Chapel in too.

After the ceremony we all headed to the Great Ote Hall where Carolla the owner greeted us. This was my first time at Great Ote Hall and it’s a fab venue, the house is an excellent backdrop with a large grazed area complete with a generously sized marquee.

As well as the marquee, house and grounds there is an ornate pathway surrounded by a strip of gardens that are lovely to walk through and have photos.

In fact, everything on this day just clicked, the people, the weather, the way the sun crossed the sky relative to everything and the venues all worked perfectly.

Here are some more images from the day: