Once the bride and groom have been to the Orangery to take a look at the setup there, the wedding guests are called to dinner for the wedding breakfast. At the same time, I will then ask the bride and groom back downstairs to the main hotel in order that I can take their couple's photos - the more posed set of images that you get on your wedding day. The timing here is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, not everyone is completely at home in front of the camera, and the last thing I want is for the bride and groom to have to be photographed with hundreds of people looking at them. It would be unnerving for me, let alone the newlyweds! The second reason that the timing here is important, is because I hear endless stories of brides and grooms who were 'taken off' or 'taken away' during their wedding, and the guests don't see the bride and groom for hours, often wondering where they ended up and what's happened to them. I choose to photograph the bride and groom on their wedding day once the remaining wedding guests have been called to dinner. When this happens, the wedding guests at Wood Norton weddings get asked to make their way from the main hotel to the Orangery. This physically moves the guests out of the way, but at the same time it pre-occupies them a little. When the wedding guests are looking for their seats for the wedding breakfast or are ordering drinks at the bar in the Orangery, they are less concerned with where the bride and groom are.
The four images on this page are all from Amy and Richard's summer wedding at the Wood Norton. In the top left image we can see the couple set in a flowerbed of tulips. The year of their wedding, the Wood Norton had planted several thousand tulips - I believe the number was something like four-thousand or seven-thousand, but I can't be sure. Either way, there were lots and it looks really spectacular.
In the image below, the bottom left image on this page, we can see the bride and groom in a more traditional wedding pose against the wall that runs around the perimeter of the wedding venue. The middle image is taken in the same location and shows the bride and groom kissing. The interesting thing here is that the image is printed over the very centre of the double page spread, directly over where the pages fold. The wedding albums that I use are incredible in that they allow printing over the middle of the page, with no loss in quality and no disturbance to the image itself.
The top right image on this spread is taken in the place I describe as the 'alley of trees' as I don't quite know what it's called but people seem to get the right idea! This is one of my favourite places to take photos at the Wood Norton, and is the site of one of the most famous wedding photos taken there.
The final image, the bottom right photograph on this layout is taken under the same tree that supports the rope swing that's been seen in other images. You can see the difference here between images taken in direct sunlight and those taken in areas of open shade. In the shaded areas, the light is much softer and therefore much more flattering and at the same time easier to work with.
Location: The Wood Norton.
Keywords: Photographer-directed image (149), Wood Norton Weddings (129).