Alex and Mat's Wedding at Brockhurst School, Berkshire

Rewinding a little bit, Alex and Mat had their wedding at Brockhurst School, near Newbury, Berkshire on Halloween last year.  Although there was a Halloween theme going on later in the day, Alex had decided against doing the whole black cat and cauldron thing for walking down the aisle and instead wore a beautiful lacy white dress with matching white shoes.  She also wore the tiara that her mum had worn on her own wedding day - which I think is lovely!

Alex and Mat are very much into photography themselves and their home is full of photographs from their holiday travels as you can see hanging on the wall here - very good they are too!

 

  

Brockhurst School is a stunning looking Victorian mansion and the Great Hall where the wedding ceremony takes place is overlooked by a gallery, which is ideal for setting up a second camera:

 

 

As well as providing a games room with a whole host of things to do, there was even a Halloween themed dressing up box which resulted in various guests wandering around dressed as vampires,  witches and monsters or appearing to have been stabbed with various nasty looking implements - great fun!  To round things off perfectly a couple of bats even came out after dark for a flutter around.

If you would like to find out more about Brockhurst School (which has a very interesting history), you can visit it's website here:  http://www.brockmarl.org.uk/

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Wedding Photographers in Berkshire

Bushra and Mustafa's London Wedding Photography

I was out doing some landscape photography one evening when my mobile went off. To most people this is a fairly normal occurrence, but to me it was something of a shock. At the time I had some awful thing that lost signal at any excuse and needed to be switched off and on again before it would recover, had a battery life of about twelve hours in warm weather (twenty minutes if it was cold) and a keypad so small that one finger covered most of the keys - we didn't get on very well, although on the plus side it was a nice bright orange colour so it was quite difficult to lose.

On the phone was Bushra, a friend of Asmaa and Amira's whose weddings I had photographed previously (to Francesco and Adam respectively), wanting to know if I was available to cover her wedding as well. A quick check of the diary when I got home and yes, I'm free - brilliant!

It was a pretty overcast and rainy day when I arrived at Bushra's home, although everyone was in high spirits, especially the children:

There was an amazing amount going on, a real party and even a traditional Turkish drummer and trumpeter doing their very best to deafen the entire street. When we left to go to the wedding car about two hundred yards down the road, I discovered that my shoes had gone missing, or more accurately there were so many in the porch that I could not quickly identify which were mine. So I had a rather soggy and painful squelch down the road in socks with the wedding party and the band - bang bang, toot toot, squelch squelch... Nina managed to find my shoes eventually and then there was a mad dash across London in the rush hour (which is better than Brighton in the rush hour) with the heater on full blast trying to dry my feet out.

  

Bushra and Mustafa had their wedding at the Regency Banqueting Suite in Tottenham, watched by something in the region of 400 guests - quite an event!

After Bushra and Mustafa had been led into the venue by the band, we were treated to a fantastic display of traditional Turkish dancing, involving lots of jumping around with drinks balanced on heads, scythes being twirled with scant regard for health and safety (great!) and a lot of very loud music.

 

It was great to see Asmaa, Amira and Adam again, although unfortunately Francesco could not make it. Adam and Amira had brought their little girl along as well and she is gorgeous!

By about 10pm everything was starting to draw to a close, the feet had finally dried out and it was time to start the journey home.

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London Wedding Photographers

Juliette and Sameh's Wedding at Weybridge Registry Office

There is something particularly nice about small family weddings and when the Groom is from Egypt and his entire family seem to be experts at Belly Dancing, it gets exciting, believe me! Juliette and Sameh had their wedding at Weybridge Register Office and the Richmond Gate Hotel.

Weybridge Registry Office is one of the nicer ones I have come across, having quite a large sunny garden and the building itself is an old manor house, with lots of oak panelling and leather furniture.

The trip over to the Richmond Gate Hotel wasn't too bad, the one worry with getting around in this part of London is getting stuck in traffic, but we all arrived at pretty much the same time.

Fabulous cake:

Juliette and Sameh had arranged some great entertainment, with live music (including Juliette's son playing the guitar), DJ and a Mind Boggler called Chris Hare who amazed everyone with mind boggling tricks and of course lots of belly dancing!
 

The Richmond Gate Hotel is a very nice venue for a smaller wedding and you can find more details on their website. If you like the idea of having a Mind Boggler at your wedding, party or even corporate event, you can learn more about Chris Hare's astonishing mind boggliness on his website www.mindboggler.co.uk!

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01323 639404
Weybridge Wedding Photographers

Snowy Landscape Photography on the South Downs

Hopefully I'll be doing Ben Nevis with some friends in a in a few weeks time, so to start getting the legs in order and shoot a few snowy landscapes I took a hike up over the downs the other day. The depth of snow across the top was quite surprising, well past my knees in places and I somehow crossed Beachy Head Road without realising until I noticed that I was heading downhill and shouldn't be - visibility was pretty poor. There was nobody around and going past the empty pub and Countryside Visitor Centre felt rather like featuring in a post-apocalyptic horror movie, I almost expected to hear the growls of starving feral dogs at any moment. The weather opened up quite a bit around Belle Toute and I managed to get a couple of good shots:

  

I finally saw people when I reached Birling Gap, a film crew - a spooky coincidence given my earlier thoughts! They were making a black comedy called 'The Edge', which is set in a hotel with all sorts of odd happenings - I will look out for it.

 

The weather really started to close in on the way back from East Dean and I had to resort to map and compass - can't remember the last time I did this on the Downs. Getting lost wasn't the issue (just head East), but I was keen to avoid taking a route that lost me a lot of height, just to go back up again. I managed to get a position fix before visibility dropped to about twenty metres and spent the next couple of hours in a world of white navigating off the compass about 30 feet at a go.

I came up onto Beachy Brow about 50 metres from where I'd planned, which was a pretty good shot under the circumstances and trudged the last mile home - downhill all the way! The depth of snow had made for quite tough going, but it was a great day and having the Downs all to yourself is a rare event these days.

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01323 639404
Sussex Landscape Photographer

Tamsin and Andrew's Wedding at the Ramada Ascot Hotel, Berkshire

You know that you are at an extremely well run wedding venue when the first thing the reception staff say to you is "Good morning Mr House, the Groom is currently relaxing in the spa pool, would you like me to take you down there for a photo opportunity?" Now that is seriously on the ball!

Tamsin and Andrew had their wedding at the Ramada Ascot Hotel, which is a beautiful 18th century manor house in Berkshire not far from Legoland (possible use as a creche?). The bridal suite that Tamsin used to get ready is lovely and overlooks the hotel grounds with it's ornamental pond.

Andrew and his party had a slightly smaller, but equally lovely suite at the other end of the hotel. All the men arrived within a couple of minutes of us and while I was busy getting covering the groom getting ready I noticed that Nina had been roped into pinning on button holes and straightening ties!

You can use a window in the bridal suite to do the group photographs from, although my favourite is this slightly surreal shot of the bride coming out through the restaurant doors directly below:

I love this photograph of Tamsin (who is incredibly natural in front of the camera). It was taken just after sunset and she is illuminated by a floodlight that lights up one of the trees in the grounds:

The Ramada Ascot is an excellent wedding venue, but what really sets it apart in my mind is Robert, the Event Manager. He seemed to be everywhere at once, but completely unobtrusive and unflappable, always in control of events without appearing controlling, he helped organise the group shots, kept me briefed well in advance of what was happening and most importantly made the day feel like it was very personal to Tamsin and Andrew. If you are interested in having your wedding at the Ramada Ascot (and you will be in very good hands) you can find more information on their Website.

www.mickhouse.com
01323 639404
Berkshire Wedding Photographers