Stanbrook Abbey wedding album

Pages 3 and 4 of Rebecca and Ryan's wedding album starts with an image showing the father of the bride seeing his daughter for the first time on her wedding day whilst wearing her dress.

Once the bridesmaids had finished the tying and tightening of the bride's wedding dress, I could see a shadow looming at the living room window and knew it would be the father of the bride, he appeared to be pacing up and down and I can only imagine that this was due to his overwhelming excitement. 

I called for the father of the bride to come in, and positioned myself that I could see over the brides shoulder and be ready to photograph her father's reaction. I think it's important to shoot in this way because an image showing just the father's expression would almost be meaningless without any real context. Including the bride in the frame, no matter how small or out of focus still adds to the image as a storytelling tool.

As the father of the bride walked in, he paused for a few seconds, taking in the moment. The light couldn't be better for this image, as there was a large conservatory behind me and the sun was shining through the glass at just the right angle, lighting the father of the bride's face just enough. 

For the next page of the album, you can see another image showing the reaction of the father, now in the process of embracing his daughter. 

There's also a photo of the bride's reaction to one of the dogs who would be a ring bearer on the day, and finally there's a classic bridal portrait of Rebecca with her bouquet.

For the background image to this page, I used a photo of the bride's parent's calendar that I found in their kitchen. I'm always on the lookout for photos like this for this very reason - They not only remind you of the date of the wedding, should you ever need reminding, but the images are great for backing pages for wedding albums too. I set the image in the album just so that you could read 'the big day' between the other featured images on this page.