This is how you do a wedding.

You face each other. You face each other and share your commitment to each other. You share your commitment, amongst those you hold dearest, share your commitment to one another. You do all of this in a place that is you. You celebrate, in a way that is you.

This is how Angela and Patrick did a wedding. Their wedding.

Hi Phill, Your photos are beautiful. Thus opened Angela and Patrick’s first email to me. They booked my soul on the spot. A month and a week later they booked me to photograph their wedding too. Patrick was raised in the Kent countryside, Angela on the other side of the world in Brisbane, Australia. They met in London. They married in a way that was them.

The day before the marriage real, they dealt with the legal niceties at Tunbridge Wells registry office. On the big day proper, friends and family gathered at Patrick’s family home to witness a ceremony constructed by he and Angela to fully reflect who they really were and what they meant to each other. It had a transformative and lingering effect on me.

Those Kent sheep and their opposable cloven hooves!

On the morning of the wedding a small army of helpers gathered together to put the finishing touches to the infrastructure of the day, the cumulation of a rather epic planning process as such things always tend to be. Arranging flowers, planting signs, mowing lawns, clearing a field of sheep… evidence to form a car park friendly to wedding day shoes, paving what would typically be a dirt-track that had turned somewhat muddy due to recent rain as a road into that freshly cleansed meadow. All manner of jobs to be done. It created a fantastic feeling of community, of coming together and being a significant part of an event, not simply witnesses to the same.

Rocky…

Angela and her Antipodean entourage were getting ready at the Pretty Maid House near Sevenoaks. Bridal preparations tend to be relatively relaxed affairs on the majority of my commissions. In this instance I experienced what has to have been the most chilled-out example of such affairs that I have witnessed.

Back at the ranch…

It’s behind you…

Elliot, a long standing friend of Patrick’s, served as celebrant and master of ceremonies. His performance was fantastic. Engaging and compelling. I dare say personal knowledge of Patrick and Angela combined with belief in their venture fuelled the potency of his delivery but all things being equal I’d say he has more than the makings of a great wedding celebrant in general (I’ve seen, and heard, more than a few so I know where the bar is set). I’ve no idea if he has any inclinations to hire himself out as such though.

A reading from Dr Seuss was delivered beautifully by Victoria and Leah, two of Angela’s best friends from Brisbane…

Patrick’s uncle, Rocky, sang Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle…

I wish there were a video somewhere online of Patrick’s father, Jonathon, delivering his rendition of Hovis Presley’s I Rely On You.

I rely on you
like a Skoda needs suspension
like the aged need a pension
like a trampoline needs tension
like a bungee jump needs apprehension

I rely on you
like a camera needs a shutter
like a gambler needs a flutter
like a golfer needs a putter
like a buttered scone involves some butter

I rely on you
like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve
like a hairpin needs a drastic curve
like an HGV needs endless derv
like an outside left needs a body swerve

I rely on you
like a handyman needs pliers
like an auctioneer needs buyers
like a laundromat needs driers
like The Good Life needed Richard Briers

I rely on you
like a water vole needs water
like a brick outhouse needs mortar
like a lemming to the slaughter
Ryan’s just Ryan without his daughter

I rely on you

© Hovis Presley, 1994

I rather want to experience it again. In common with everything else about the ceremony, it was fantastic. Mesmerising and hilarious in equal measure…

Shouldn’t all marriage vows have a component dealing with shopping habits? :~)…

Ammo crate…

On Confetti and Aerodynamics

Confetti has a particularly low mass to surface-area ratio. Unless you use rice. Don’t use rice. It stings. Badly.

Having a particularly low mass to surface-area ratio, a high damping coefficient is brought to bear in its flight through air.

As such, stand close to the couple when releasing your confetti. It also makes for better photographs, in that the couple will want to see you in said photographs (if only to track down key perpetrators at a later date).

Angela and Patrick’s guests had an innate understanding of the aerodynamic properties of confetti; a rather enthusiastic approach to its deployment also…

Patrick told me he’d not been aware of my presence, when later on I showed him the confetti shots on the back of my camera. I’m not at all surprised; visibility was down to two feet in places.

It’ll make a nice memento I suppose when they’re still finding bits of it on their first anniversary :~)

I must have had that urgent look on my face…

One of my blog readers no doubt…

Part Two >>>

Contact Kent Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Angela and Patrick celebrated a wedding of their own making with the aid of a heartily gregarious bunch of friends and family. Set in the Kent countryside, at Patrick’s family home, they dealt with the legal niceties of the marriage process the day before their wedding then sealed their pact in a ceremony of their own design. It was a thoroughly enriching experience.

Ever get that feeling you’re being…

Angela’s mother, Annette, opened the round of pre-wedding breakfast speeches with a warm-hearted, good humoured and touching address…

Patrick likewise proved a fine orator…

Patrick’s brothers and best-men, Ben and Alastair, set up a nice rhetorical cross-fire zone…

Hit the spot…

Fantastic food followed from Purple Pumpkin.

Australian rules bouquet tossing…

From the land that brought you Olivia and Kylie…

The Class of ’58. They rocked with passion and energy befitting of the day…

Tim Tams!!! Australian Penguins. But better than Penguins (with apologies to Nicola and Jon if they happen to be reading but, well, you know :~)…

Twenty-five was the speed limit…

And apparently they were carrying on through ’til 3.00am!..

[Addendum: Master of ceremonies, Elliot, reports that the party continued through to 04:30 rather than 03:00 as some of the Irish contingent refused to go to bed. I salute them!]

Congratulations Angela and Patrick and thanks to you, your family and friends for being such welcoming and fun people to be amongst.

Contact Kent Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Contact The Old Finsbury Town Hall Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Indeed you read it right and likewise you see it right. Chanel & Phil will be getting married in Somerset in September, the new English Summer. As I was up in London for a wedding the day before and that’s where they both live – isn’t it where everyone lives these days? (In fact, Chanel & Phil are Londoners born and bred so Somerset is an interesting and adventurous thread to the whole story) – we took the chance to meet up in person and discuss wedding day plans. We had met before, virtually speaking. Everyone looked less pixelated than they do on Skype.

Contact Somerset Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Vanessa & Osiris are getting married just a month from now! Seemingly in common with many of my clients they’re planning a home move at the same time. The wedding promises to be a blast. I’m sure the home move will be smooth as smooth can be. Anyway, yes, the wedding. Plenty to tell even though it hasn’t even happened yet but… they seem to like surprises, I’m not certain which elements of their London wedding are designed to be surprises, and there’s not too long to wait to find out all anyway.

Contact London Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

It was en route from St. Malo to Fouesnant that I looked up to the sky and found myself thinking, “C’est un arc en ciel!” I wondered briefly where that had come from. Not the rainbow – I know that comes from the prismatic effect of sunlight passing through a myriad of vapourous water droplets in the sky – but why was I thinking in French? Maybe it was a function of driving on the right hand side of the road in a right hand drive car? It had been some seventeen or so years since I’d been in the habit of speaking the language and then but for a few all too brief months. Situational learning at work once might say.

Furthermore it had been some twenty-one or so years since I’d last been in Brittany, when I’d cycled with my father around the interior and across parts of the south coast. On approaching Fouesnant I started to feel that I recognised the landscape. On arrival I sent a text message to my father asking him if we’d visited the area all that time ago. It transpires that we’d stayed a night in a gîte on the outskirts of town. It was good to be back!

Jackie & Vincent. Texan belle meets Breton boy. In Las Vegas of all places. And here we all found ourselves, in the birthplace of Crêpes and Galettes. A wonderful couple to work with, they have a great joie de vivre about them matched by an equally great concern for the happiness of others.

I was very happy to find the Bretons as gregarious a people as I’d last found them. They certainly know how to lay on a welcome and put on a party. The Cantonese contingent brought a great deal of mirth and playfulness to the mix too. Throw some ambassadors of Pennsylvania, New York, California and I dare say a good few other places into the mix and you have the makings of a grand wedding day.

To the Bretons: Merci d’être les meilleurs hôtes dans le monde. J’aurais aimé pouvoir y rester pour toujours, mais je devais aller chercher ma fille à l’école le mardi.

To the Cantonese: 對唔住 我唔識講廣東話 你要唔要同我跳舞？

Let’s Samba!

Manoir du Stang:

I was going to add the French translation for dapper but the first syllable threw me a curve ball. Vestimentaire sums it up just as well…

House of Flying Bouquets…

House of Flying Cufflinks…

It’s amazing how much you can get done when everyone’s ready four hours before the marriage ceremony. Great fun it was too :~)

Part Two >>>

Contact Brittany Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Jackie & Vincent met in Vegas, married in France, live in California. It was a mere hop and a skip (and an eleven hour overnight ferry journey) down the road for me, from my home in Dorset to their wedding in Brittany. Jackie’s cousin, Bettina (a talented artist), was a student of mine several years ago. This small world of connections led to a fantastically enjoyable and highly enriching commission for me in documenting the story of Jackie & Vincent’s day.

Their marriage ceremony was conducted at L’église Saint-Pierre de Gouesnac’h and celebrations took place, through to the early hours of the following day, at Manoir du Stang in La Forêt Fouesnant.

I could immerse myself in their wedding day time and again.

How Tim got away with that one unbruised, I don’t know! (You had to be there)…

And a truly delicious menu it was too! We were in France after all :~) Thanks to Jackie & Vincent for taking such good care of me – and not only in the culinary department – and to the Manoir du Stang staff for being so fantastically attentive…

Table FOUR!!!..

Say cheese indeed!

Free WiFi. Always a boon for the traveller. Thick stone walls though may limit access to the room that the router is located in…

Unlike its Scottish counterpart, the Breton kilt never did quite catch on…

Table FOUR!!!..

Shot and published at Jackie’s insistence…

And how could I refuse? Thank you Jackie & Vincent for having me along for this leg of your journey. You were brilliant. Your guests, your family and friends were brilliant too.

Contact Brittany Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Contact New Forest Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Contact Kent Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : 07870 696248

Contacter Fouesnant Photographe de Mariage Phillip Allen : phill@misterphill.com : +44 7870 696248