What does the word ‘wedding’ bring to mind for you? A white dress, a country house, a fancy sit down meal? When I first started in the wedding industry that’s what it meant to me as well. But now I hear the word wedding and I know the only constants are love, joy and celebration. Throwing personality into that mix is the secret recipe for an amazing wedding – remembering of course that not all weddings have a bride or a dress; not all weddings are formal – and the best ones, if I’m honest, are unexpected and characterful.
Weddings go by in a flash and a blur because there is SO MUCH going on. It might feel like 10 minutes, but the story of your day in pictures will be a revelation. So many of my wedding photographer friends say they struggle to send a selection of just 60 images for a blog post. I can totally see why – and today I’m really feeling it! Hannah & Jamie’s (pre-covid) village hall wedding is summed up beautifully in our header pic: it’s ALL about the people they love, and who love them.
Time to talk about your Big Wedding – the one that’s going to happen after all of this is over. Maybe you’re having a micro wedding first and a big party later. Maybe you’ve postponed getting married until 2022 or 2023. Perhaps you’re planning a big do in the summer and planning to party the night away, festival style, in a big open space! Either way, when those big wedding celebrations happen again, we’ll all need to let our hair down and have the party of a lifetime!
We asked Fortune Band to share their top tips for keeping a wedding dance floor filled all night long!
A wedding isn’t about finding THE dress and spending more on it than anything else. It’s not about the perfect colour palette, or about spending months crafting decorations or personal keepsakes for all of your guests. (Although all of those things can be fun and lovely if that’s what you choose to do!) But really, a wedding is ALL about love, and it’s about family, and joy, and celebration. It’s about sharing that moment when the two of you decided to take on the world together, for ever. And yes, you can do that with just the two of you, or in a micro wedding with just a handful of the people you love most of all in the world. Or you can share it with 50 people, or 500. Never listen to anyone who tells you what your wedding ‘should’ be – because all it needs to be is YOURS.
People say your wedding will go in a blur, there’s so much going on. It’s true! You might plan every moment carefully and take time out for just the two of you, but still on the day your wedding will be a whirlwind. It’s the most incredibly happy hurricane of a day you could ever imagine, but still it goes at a hundred miles an hour, and everything happens all at once.
So capturing the moments is a precious thing indeed.
