How Not to Get Married: Confessions of a Wedding Photographer by George Mahood

Author:George Mahood [Mahood, George]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2019-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

Jen and Matt’s guests all make their way back to their cars, and I smugly jog back to mine further down the road, knowing I will be able to escape before all of them. It’s a ten-minute drive to the reception venue: a beautiful pair of converted barns, surrounding an idyllic courtyard in the Northamptonshire countryside. I have photographed at the venue many times before. It’s a fantastic spot, and I can’t think of a better place to end my photography career.

The wedding venue will be one of the first things you book for your wedding. Its location, size, style and cost are all important factors that you will obviously weigh up when making your decision.

There are some incredible places to get married out there. And they often come with an eye-watering price tag. It is understandable that you might have your heart set on a particular venue, but don’t book your dream venue at the expense of having to trim down your guest list, either because there is not enough space at the venue to include all your guests, or because the cost prohibits you from asking everyone you want. If there are people you want to be at your wedding, but you can’t invite them because of the cost of your venue, find a cheaper venue. Your guest list is far more important than your venue.

It’s worth remembering that, in my experience, there is no correlation whatsoever between the cost of the venue and the enjoyment factor of the wedding. If anything, I would say the more understated and relaxed the venue, the better the atmosphere.

Pick a venue that suits your personality. Just because you can afford a stupidly over the top location for your wedding, doesn’t necessarily mean you should book one. I once photographed a wedding at an extremely opulent stately home. It was a stately home that didn’t usually do weddings, but the entire house had been hired for the weekend for a ludicrous sum. I arrived at the venue expecting an extravagant well-to-do couple and was surprised to discover the groom was a down-to-earth builder. He had built up his business from scratch into a multi-million-pound company and wanted to show off his wealth to his friends and family at his wedding.

It was a relatively small wedding, as the house could only seat about 30 people around its table. All the wedding guests were from the same working-class background as the groom before he had made his fortune. Sitting at the long dining room table, being served fine-dining food by silver service, everyone – including the bride and groom, and me – looked very uncomfortable. Yes, it was a wonderful venue, but it was too much for the occasion. They all looked like they would much rather be dancing to cheesy music in the local pub, rather than sipping expensive champagne in the library of a stately home and listening to a string quartet. It was the most expensive wedding I have ever photographed, and also the one most lacking in atmosphere.

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