A Sanyukta Shrestha dress, a wild and beautiful location, and a weekend celebration with a lively ceilidh – Bex and Dave made their wedding incredible!
This is one of those ‘real life’ weddings we often rave about on English Wedding. it’s another by our members York Place Studios whose style you’ll absolutely recognise by now. These brilliant documentary wedding photographers capture the truth of weddings: with the beautiful styling of the day as a backdrop to all of those human connections and moments of humour which unfold as heartwarming stories throughout the day.
You’ll see what I mean at breakfast time (scroll to just a few images down) – I know some couples will carefully plan an exquisitely perfect champagne breakfast, but some of us just need our Krispies, chocolate spread and brown sauce (?) to start the day no matter what! And it’s those little elements of real life which I love about York Place Studios weddings.
The beauty of this wedding, captured in this way, is its personality. There are so many looks of absolute love and joy it’s making me grin my little head off. The older generation enjoy every moment; the little ones are having their best day ever. Photos like this always make me glad to see children at weddings! You can tell the guys at York Place are exceptional family photographers and I think that’s really important when it comes to choosing a wedding photographer.
I’ll leave you with some wonderful words of wisdom from Bex and Dave’s photographers before we dive in to their gorgeous gallery:
Photographs are always important but as time passes they become truly priceless. The memories that we hold dear become wrapped within the photographs until it is impossible to not think of the memory through the photograph. ~ York Place Studios
Let’s explain true documentary wedding photography. It’s been a while since we’ve done this, and Camilla & Guy’s amazing wedding (with images by York Place Studios) provides the perfect opportunity!
Here at English Wedding we LOVE documentary style wedding photography. Its role is to tell the story of your wedding. There are no posed photographs, no one is there telling you what to do, how to pose or where to look. Your wedding day unfolds as it will, and your photographers capture the natural moments as they happen.
In their blog of Camilla & Guy’s Cheshire wedding, York Place Studios explain how this works so beautifully:
We don’t go into weddings with preconceptions in mind – we don’t need a busy dance floor, bustling crowd or busy schedule of activities; we don’t look for any set structure or big “key” events – we are simply the storytellers of each unique wedding that we photograph and the story of your wedding is never written until the final click of the shutter.
I love scrolling through York Place Studios wedding photos. So often there’s an adorable kind of side story of the children at a wedding. It’s so lovely to see a wedding through their eyes, and these photos really capture that magic! From the cuteness of their outfits to knee slides in white trousers on manicured lawns through to sleepy onesies… every photo makes me smile, and I know you’ll love seeing all of these too!
When the planning is done and the guests on their way, all you want to do is enjoy your day – and gorgeous couple Maruzzella and Ben did just that! The happiness just shines from their wedding photos, which tell the story of their day so beautifully. The happy pair married at Goldsborough Hall in Yorkshire and chose award winning photographers York Place Studios to capture their best day ever.
We do love a black-tie wedding – especially for a church and stately home setting, the look is just fabulous. Maruzzella’s all-over-lace wedding dress is absolutely stunning, and along with the elegant floral styling and that amazing calla lily bouquet this wedding oozes luxury and elegance. But it’s the story that wins our hearts. The little glances from bridesmaids and parents, and the look of love shared between the bride and groom… they’re what make our hearts sing!
Weddings are never just about the couple. As much as we adore those loved-up shots of our brides and grooms on English Wedding, it’s the interactions between wedding guests that are always fascinating. In this wedding we stopped our scrolling for proud parents, massive heartfelt hugs and belly laughs. Oh, and there’s always a little humour in the best wedding photos, so watch out for babies with little baby opinions on events, and other little ones supping OJ from champagne flutes. This is pure documentary wedding photography at its best and it’s just brilliant!
This is a wedding from the summer of 2019, when we were all free to hug, and laugh, and dance and sing our hearts out with no restrictions at weddings. I know all of my wedding photographer friends are back out there capturing amazing celebrations again this summer, and it fills me with joy to know weddings are back.
What makes every wedding unique is the couple at the centre of it all. It’s their personalities, the friends they gather around them and the families who shaped their lives. And yet, these are the things that every wedding shares: the connections between people and the moments that make life so bloody amazing. Without gushing too much… I love publishing our York Place Studios weddings because they capture this essence of a wedding like no other photographers can.
Does the thought of surprises on your wedding day fill you with delight, or haunt your planning dreams with fear?
It’s something that’s been on my mind recently, and I really wanted to write a little about it. Because however carefully planned your wedding will be, spontaneous things will happen. Gather a bunch of 30 or more people together… and it’s herding cats time. It’s kind of a wonderful thing, if you embrace it!
Captured by Liam Collard Photography
Last month we published 7 tips for a smooth sailing wedding day from our friends at Liam Collard Photography. I recommend you read it – but in a nutshell, the advice was:
- plan all the details
- expect the unexpected
- calm your nerves with a first look
- be organised with group shots
- communicate things like venue locations clearly
- shake up the receiving line tradition
- hire a wedding planner
Odd little things will happen on your wedding day – the trick is to not let it break you. The reason you have a timeline and plan is to avoid utter chaos… but it’s not about having complete control.
On the day, you should know you’ve done your best, there’s a plan – but if it gets a little messy, not to worry. So long as you’re both where you need to be for the main bit, it’s mission accomplished.
Ultimately a lot of your day is about your guests. It’s about all of your favourite people gathering together to catch up and tell stories, to hug and giggle and get face ache from smiling. Look forward to being a part of that. It’s going to be AMAZING.
I also loved reading this from the fabulous York Place Studios:
Harriet & Phil’s celebration at The West Reservoir Centre, London just invited spontaneity. The casual dress-code, the unfussy, easygoing BBQ dinner, the beautiful peculiarities of West Reservoir Centre’s informal setting. From the moment the guests arrived everything about this wedding shouted out that they were here, first and foremost to have fun. And have fun they 100% did!
Captured by York Place Studios.
Perhaps spontaneity is an emerging ‘trend’ in weddings. Perhaps every wedding is unique and different and couples tie the knot just as they live their lives: some of us are meticulous planners and others go with the flow – we’re happy to ‘wing it’. And either way, it’s fine.
I’ll end this little blog with my personal, ONE tip for your wedding:
Get there on time.
So long as you’re there on time to actually get married, the rest is up to you! Plan a little, have fun a LOT – and make your best day ever happen, YOUR WAY.
I’m wondering this morning if any other weddings could ever rival the joy and celebration of an Indian wedding. There’s just so much going on, so much happiness and laughter. Today our blog is all about Guppi and Gan’s wedding weekend, which has me grinning from ear to ear at all the amaaazing moments. They chose award winning documentary wedding photographers York Place Studios to capture both days, and we invite you to grab a cuppa and scroll slowly… because this is a wedding with so much going on, all captured thoughtfully and beautifully.
The gorgeous pair had a traditional Hindu wedding at the Shri Venkateswara (Balaji) Temple in the West Midlands – an incredible place, inspired by and modelled on a temple in Tirupathi, South India. The wedding photography really does tell the story of the day in a way that ‘standard’ wedding pictures often don’t. This is the beauty of authentic documentary wedding photography, and York Place are one of the very, very best in the UK.
The following day, the guys changed into black tie for a breathtaking civil ceremony at Blenheim Palace in Oxford, with Guppi in a stunning Indian dress which sparkles in the sunshine.
Don’t miss the little flower girl trying (successfully!) to steal the show – she’s adorable! All of those emotional connections with loved ones are so very precious, it’s wonderful to see them all captured here. This is what weddings are all about, and I’ve LOVED scrolling through all the images from Guppi and Gan’s Indian wedding weekend.
For us that’s what weddings are all about: photographing people just being people, making memories not just photographs and trying to capture an essence of who our couples are in our candid, inimitable style. ~ Dom & Liam, London wedding photographers York Place Studios
