You book me for my pictures, but I am there on your wedding day to make your life easier, more fun, and less stressed. You pay me to go to your party, I return that by taking kick ass non-boring photos, and by trying to do as much as possible on your wedding day to make it flow and run as simply as possible.

In my 7 years as a Shropshire wedding photographer, I have seen pretty much everything, from the laid-back ad hoc bride who says ‘we’ll wing it on the day’ (nightmare) through to bridezilla who wants to control everything to the minute worrying that ‘it’s 6:32, the band said they would arrive and set up at 6:30…’ (also a nightmare).

Some days it’s easy being a wedding photographer, not that my life is hard - my job is to get paid to go to parties, for which I am forever grateful and very, very, lucky - and one of those days was a visit to Pendrell Hall, just inside Staffordshire not a million miles away from Wolverhampton.

You get to see all sorts in this line of work. (Readers of a certain age will say ‘That’s a Dire Straits lyric’. Readers of a different age will say ‘Who’s Dire Straits’? But that is a rabbit hole we don’t need to go down…)

One of the reasons that I am proud to be ‘handpicked supplier’ for The Mill Barns is that they share a lot of their core values with me - and our brands aligns in so many ways.

I am a bit of an old romantic. You know those perfect days you see in films or TV shows. Where the bloke gets his girl and they get married to a raucous and happy party, on a beautiful day with perfect weather, there is plenty of laughter…

Kent, the garden of England! Honeymoon spot of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Hottest place ever recorded in Britain. Site of the utterly beautiful Broome Park.

I’m looking back on the weekend and Sophie and James’ awesome day near to Bridgnorth…starting at St Peter’s Church in Chelmarsh – a gorgeous little country village church that couldn’t be more ‘Shropshire’ if it tried.

For a long time I have wanted to shoot at the gorgeous Soughton Hall, Northrop, North Wales, and Megan and Jordan’s big day gave me that opportunity. I planned for this day, met the couple before and had a grewat pre-shoot with them and a good discussion about the detail of their day and how I would fit into it, but what I hadn’t planned for was just how hot it was going to be that day!

Some things are quintessentially English. Summer flowers, it being ‘too hot’ (I like it hot, but ohhhh this? It’s too hot…), Pimms, wheat fields, a white plaster and brown wooden cottage with roses around the door, a 1000 year old church, a garden with a pond, terrible dancing, fantastic parties…

A while ago, I joined a Facebook group called “A group where everyone is super fucking nice to each other for no reason”. In this group people post things about their life, either great joys and triumphs, or sad events and tragedies, and other members say (and occasionally do) nice things.

And I am back in the game. Covid might try, but people bounce back and they bounce back stronger and brighter than before…Tom and Mica should have been married last year, but…yadda yadda…anyway, they are married now, and they got married in style at the absolutely gorgeous Redhouse Barn rustic wedding venue near to Brosgrove.

It’s a busy time for me - the studio is open again for newborn and baby shoots, and before the wedding season really kicks in (Lockdown’s and Roadmap out permitting of course), it’s pre-shoot time!

I do love doing model shoot and styled shoots. Given all the ‘bullshit’ of the Covid lockdowns and the lack of work and lack of opportunities to pick up a camera, it was lovely to be allowed to do this shoot!