Wedding: Photography & Portraits

Finally – finally! – only 9 months after our wedding, I’m getting round to sharing the last post on it! If you’re interested in seeing the other posts and photos from the day, check out my series below, or take a look at my whole wedding category for planning tips too:

Today I wanted to share a bit more about the photography, mainly our portrait photos, as this was one of my biggest priorities for our wedding day. As someone who basically lives on the internet, everything is very visual for me. I hate to admit it, but I wanted our wedding to be Pinterest and Instagram friendly – not to get a bazillion likes and repins and whatnot, but because those are the type of photos that instil that sense of nostalgia for the day later on and really capture the feel of it.

Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos

And although I wanted Insta-pretty photos, I also wanted natural. It was very important for me that whoever we chose for the photos would capture not just the details, but the moments. I quickly realised that what I was looking for was a “documentary” style photographer, someone who would blend into the background but who was also confident to give us plenty of direction when we were lacking it.

I shared our engagement photos here and I talked about how happy I was with our choice of photographer then. Looking back now on our wedding photos, I honestly couldn’t be happier with them! (Although we didn’t manage to get a couple of photos I wish we’d got now – it was such a whirlwind that we didn’t realise till the next day!).

Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos

Our photographer was Jemma King – a fairly local North Yorkshire wedding photographer from Hull. Our process for choosing was to gather a huge list of photographers whose work we liked the look of – this included colourful, bright, natural and candid photos with that spark of something special and slightly retro – then to contact every single one of them for availability and pricing. This ruled out several at the first stage, then chatting to them helped us narrow it down further. In the end, we had a Skype call with Jemma who took us through her photography process and style, and this made us certain she was right for us.

Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos

To give some background info, I’m fairly confident in front of a camera because of blogging – I’m happy to smile and pose, and I actually really enjoy candid photos which capture ridiculous moments, even if I look awful in them because they’re real. Ben, on the other hand, doesn’t like having his photo taken. He feels uncomfortable being the centre of attention on a camera and hates posing. With Jemma, we felt she had the perfect balance of getting us to act natural as well as getting the angles right – she had a huge range of techniques including one where we had to list things to describe each other through the alphabet. I think we were supposed to say cute things like “adorable”, “beautiful” etc. but we ended up going down the route of “angsty”, “bottom” – whoops! The end result is natural, laughing photos that don’t feel staged – again, the kind we love.

But the portrait photos were the part that Ben was least looking forward to – I think he was worried he would mess them up and he didn’t want all that focus on him for ages. Luckily Jemma doesn’t mess around with photos and we managed to get two slots throughout the day of around 15 minutes each where we snapped portrait photos of the two of us.

Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Beth likes to ask Ben where his horse has gone here!
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
And here I’m saying “BUT DO YOU LIKE BUTTER?!”

I’m so SO happy that we managed to get these two separate sets of photos as I feel like they both capture very different moments. The first set was immediately after the ceremony and during the drinks reception – we’re both on a bit of a “woah, we just got married!” wedding high and still looking put together in our full wedding outfits. The second set was later on, after we’d eaten, when the band had just started playing and we’d started dancing. While I love the first set of photos, I absolutely aadorej this set second set of photos – they’re so much more natural and relaxed. I’ve taken off my veil and shoes (I’ve always been a barefoot person, so while I had my pretty wedding shoes and the Disney TOMS Ben had gifted me as a wedding present, I was feeling much happier with my feet in the grass!) and Ben’s got rid of his jacket and tie. I also talked about the process of choosing Ben’s outfit here and more details on it here, but it was really important to us that he as comfortable – he’s not a dressy person and we wanted that chilled and relaxed vibe for the day. Due to the timing of the wedding, summer suits like these were our main option for the day, but we ended up not going down the full suit route in the end and choosing chinos. Either way, since the weather was boiling on the day, something summery with layers that could be removed, so it looked smart to start with but still held together later, was really important.

Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos

As I said, the second of set of photos are my absolute favourite photos of the whole day. We left the busy marquee just as the sun was starting to set so we could capture the golden light – it meant we had a bit of break with time to ourselves between the more formal day time and fun evening part. Plus the setting with long grass was just perfect for my vision of summery wedding photos.

And, well, that’s that – our wedding day posts are complete, finally! Just in time for our next big adventure

Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos
Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire, wedding photos

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