On the 18th of April I provided wedding photography at The Abbey Hotel in Redditch for Jo & Jon,  this was my first time at The Abbey Hotel in Redditch apart from the engagement shoot which we did over the winter.

I was booked all day from getting ready photos until the first dance in the evening, I arrived around two hours before the service started to give me enough time to photograph the details and make a few trips to the bridal suite to capture the preparations there and to also catch up with what Jon  was doing and also to photograph guests arriving. This part of the day is always busy, where I am keeping a firm eye on the time and moving around as much as possible to capture the morning from different viewpoints.

Jo & Jon had made use of nieces and nephews for the bridesmaids and grooms men duties, all of whom were having a great time getting dressed and ready for the big day ahead in the bridal suite.  The best man was Jon sister’s son, which made a change, and there were in total a lot of children at the wedding because it was half-term and I know it was planned that way.

The children were so well-behaved throughout the wedding, they were all extremely well-behaved. 

The ceremony was held in the partitioned room where the wedding breakfast would be held later, it was a nice room with good natural light from the large window, Jo and Jon had also hired a string quartet for the ceremony and for throughout the meal.  After the ceremony, we headed outside for the wedding portraits, which we did in the grounds of the hotel and the golf course. It was at this point that I produced some smoke grenades that I'd brought for another project, but I couldn't resist trying them out for the wedding photography portraits. I have wanted to use coloured smoke in portraits for a long time, but I have these ideas then forget them. We did some portraits with the blue smoke to match the colour of the wedding before heading back to the putting green outside the front of the hotel to catch up with the guest and do the formal group photos,  we then did a quick confetti shot before all the guests entered the room for the wedding breakfast which was an afternoon tea style meal. 

After the meal followed speeches where all three the father of the bride, Jon and his young best man had some brilliant lines then after a short break we did the cutting of the cake and the first dance. All in all it was a great day, we lots of laughter and love.