Rebecca & Jonathan’s Christmas wedding at The Bowdon Rooms

Photographing weddings for friends is always special, although it does sometimes add a little more pressure. When the friend also happens to be one of the best wedding filmmakers I have ever worked with, that ramps up the excitement and the pressure pretty high!

And so, shortly before Christmas I photographed Rebecca and Jon’s amazing winter wedding at The Bowdon Rooms in Cheshire. From knowing Jon as I do (have a look at his website here to see his incredible wedding films) I knew that this was going to be a unique day full of surprises. And so it was. If I tell you that Rebecca and Jon made a Christmas cracker, complete with an individual personalised note, for every single one of their wedding guests, you will get an idea of the amount of effort they both put in to making this the best day of their lives.

I had met up with them both a few months before the wedding for their engagement shoot at Sale Water Park. The thing that struck me that day was just how brilliant Rebecca and Jon were together, all I had to do was point my camera at them. These are the couples I love to photograph and I always go to their weddings so excited.

I started the day taking photographs of Rebecca and her bridesmaids as they got ready whilst my amazing talented friend Toni Darcy was with Jon and the groomsmen – thank you again Toni for all your awesome work! We then all met up for the ceremony at St James’ Church in Didsbury. The ceremony was brilliant, full of emotion and laughter and a pleasure to photograph.

After we had taken some portraits in the little park opposite the church (and everyone had eaten cake, lots and lots of cake!) we all made our way on to the reception for the rest of the day and lots of surprises.

This was the first time I had photographed a wedding at The Bowdon Room. It’s a fantastic space and Rebecca and Jon had obviously gone to a lot of effort to make it look exactly as they wanted it to. The main room has a stage at one end which was made good use of and I loved the massive Christmas tree in the corner. Even better than that though was having a MegaDrive and air hockey. And later in the evening a Karaoke bar upstairs! So much fun.

Rebecca and Jon had told me that this wasn’t a Christmas wedding, and even though they had crackers, a Christmas tree and Christmas films as their table names, I may have believed them. That was until Jon announced their special guest at the end of the speeches. None other than Father Christmas himself! Amazing! If this wasn’t a Christmas wedding, I don’t know what is. Whatever it was, it was such an incredible day.

Thank you both so much again for asking me to be a part of your wedding day. I knew that your day was going to be full of emotion, fun, moments and surprise and you really didn’t disappoint. You are an unbelievably nice couple and I wish you both a very long and happy marriage together.