Lya and Lee were married on a Sunday in July at Aston Marina, on the canal just outside Stone. They had already done the legal part quietly in Manchester, so the ceremony at the marina was the one they actually wrote: a humanist service with a ring warming and a handfasting in it, in front of forty five people, outdoors, in full July sun.
A ceremony they wrote themselves
Because the paperwork was already signed, nothing about the afternoon had to follow a script. A humanist celebrant led it, and the shape of it was theirs. That is more common than it looks from the outside, and it is worth saying plainly that it changes what there is to photograph.
Two things in particular. The first was a ring warming, where both rings were passed along the rows and held for a moment by every guest before they came back to the front. It takes a few minutes and it is quiet, and it puts the rings in forty five pairs of hands rather than in a box on a table. The second was a handfasting, with ribbons tied around their joined hands, one by each of their mothers in turn. The celebrant's line for it was about marriage being a joining of two families rather than two people, and watching both mums do it one after the other is the moment the whole ceremony turns on.
Neither of those is a standard running order. Both were told to us on the pre wedding call, which is the only reason they were covered properly. A ring warming in particular is easy to miss if you are not expecting it, because nothing appears to be happening at the front while it goes on.
Aston Marina
Aston Marina sits on the Trent and Mersey just south of Stone, and the thing that makes it different from most Staffordshire venues is the water. The ceremony happens outdoors on a terrace under a wooden pavilion, with open fields on one side and the marina below, so there is nothing built up in any direction.
In practice that means a ceremony in unfiltered daylight, which is harder work than it sounds in the middle of a July afternoon and much better looking than a dark room. The compensation comes later. The walk down to the water in the hour before sunset is the best thing the venue has, and it is ten minutes from the barn rather than a drive, so you can take it without losing the party.
One honest note for anyone weighing it up. It is exposed. There is wind off the open ground and it turned up in the audio on the film more than it did in the photographs, which is a solvable problem but only if whoever is filming knows it is coming.
The day
Coverage ran for eight hours, from getting ready through to the party. Forty five guests, a four o'clock ceremony, family groups straight afterwards while everyone was still together, then photographs down by the canal, the wedding breakfast at six, speeches, and the first dance at eight.
The speeches were the loudest part of the day by a distance. There were four of them, including one from Lya's business partner, and they ran far past the point where most speeches stop being funny. The best line of the day came out of the father of the groom's, and the room went up.
After that it was the LOVE letters, the dance floor and a party that ran to eleven. Around five hundred and twenty edited photographs went back to them, along with the film.
The film
This was a photo and film booking, shot alongside a second photographer, and the film is the part worth talking about because it is the one most couples are unsure whether to buy.
What a film holds that photographs cannot is sound. Their vows, in their own voices, including the bit where Lee stopped halfway through and somebody had to find the bride a tissue. The celebrant explaining the handfasting while the ribbons go on. Four speeches, and the laugh that followed the best line in them. None of that survives in a photograph, and none of it is recoverable afterwards.
The counterpoint, equally honestly: a film is the thing most likely to be watched twice and then left alone, and the photographs are what end up on the wall. If the budget only stretches to one, take the photographs. If it stretches to both, the audio is what you are buying.
Photography and film in Staffordshire
We are based in Stafford, fifteen minutes from Aston Marina, and work across Staffordshire and the West Midlands. If you are planning something that is not a standard running order, a humanist ceremony, a ritual you have written yourselves, or a legal ceremony already done elsewhere, it is worth saying so early rather than late. Have a look at the other weddings here, at the Staffordshire photography page, or at how the films work. There is another Stone wedding written up over at Lyn and Nic's at the Stone House Hotel.