30 Sep Carrie & Bradley’s Christmas Wedding at Chicheley Hall
What are the chances of coincidentally booking a client whose dad was a former work colleague?
Carrie and Bradley contacted me through Hitched and were kind enough to enquire about my availability. Carrie showed my details to her dad, Dave, who I’d worked with at Marshall Amplification around ten years ago. Dave is someone I still regard as one of the funniest people I’ve ever worked with, so when Carrie showed him who she was thinking of booking, he was apparently delighted.
That’s when I knew this was going to be a great day. By all accounts, Carrie is a chip off the old block.
Chicheley Hall was also somewhere I knew from years before. It’s in the next village to where I grew up and, in fact, I spent quite a few evenings there in my youth singing Christmas carols, as I recall. So it was fascinating to return years later and see this historic stately home restored and being used as such a fantastic wedding venue.
Carrie and Bradley didn’t have to do much to decorate the venue. Their Christmas wedding meant Chicheley Hall was already looking the part, complete with a beautiful Christmas tree and all the festive touches that come with the season.
One thing to consider when planning a Christmas wedding is just how short the days are and how quickly you lose the available natural light. Trying to fit all the usual wedding-day events into the schedule means you can’t necessarily rely on having plenty of time outside for photographs.
Thankfully, Carrie and Bradley’s ceremony was earlier in the day than you might normally expect, which gave us plenty of time to make the most of what little winter daylight we had. We even managed to catch some beautiful golden-hour light for their couple photographs before the winter evening finally arrived.
Then it was time for the wedding breakfast and speeches — something I was particularly looking forward to.
Knowing that Dave, Carrie’s dad, is also a part-time radio DJ and has a reputation for being hilarious, I had a feeling his speech might be worth sticking around for.
And it was. I was in stitches and then, not long afterwards, in tears. Behind all the humour was a genuinely loving and compassionate family, and those moments always get to me. Weddings have a funny way of doing that.
I love photographing weddings. Love, laughter, tears, dancing and all the wonderfully unpredictable moments in between. What’s not to love?
And this one had Christmas thrown into the mix too.
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