Mel & Andy's Wedding

It's funny how you can make yourself nervous about something that you've never done before simply because of what you've read about it by 'professionals'

Yesterday, I shot my first wedding.  I was the second shooter for Billy McAuley at the Clarion Hotel in Carrickfergus.  First of all I owe Billy a massive thankyou because when I first started trying to contact wedding photographers about possibly assisting or even coming along to a shoot for the experience it was either no reply or a straight up 'unfortunatly, because of your lack of experience......." reply.  But when I got talking to him about what I wanted to do and how difficult it was to get that first shoot, he straight away offered me the chance to come along to his next wedding and bring my camera to get the guest shots and some candid shots too.

It was a bit of a late start for shooting so I met Billy at his house around 11am and we had a quick chat about what we would be doing during the day and more specifically what he wanted me to be doing while he was organising/shooting/generally trying to keep things on time.  It turned out that I had far more input than I expected as I was told just to work with the long lens and capture some candid images while Billy got the group shots.  I think this was probably the best scenario for me as I'm sort of used to taking street portraits and candid shots already and with the help of my good friend Sparky, I got my hands on a Canon 70-200mm 2.8 for the day.  I'm not going to wax lyrical about a lens, mainly because I don't have enough experience or the credibility to do so, but the difference it made to the shots I was getting compared to my 70-300 Tamron was unbelievable.  Needless to say, I'm already saving!

We arrived at Andy's house around midday and snapped a few of him and the grooms men ready to go, then we headed over to the Clarion to meet up with Mel and the bridesmaids.  Flowers, check.  Wedding dress, check.  Shoes, check.  Artsy picture of makeup being applied in reflection of mirror....check. 

The ceremony itself was short and sweet, getting underway in one of the event rooms upstairs and then it was a short wait before the meal was served.  The strangest thing for me was how relaxed and smoothly everything went the whole day.  Now, I've been told that this is unusual as normally there is some spanner that will inevitably find its way into the works.  But not on this occasion.  Everything just ticked over nicely.  Even when we were outside taking the last of the group shots, and it was quite obvious that most people would prefer to be sitting inside chatting with a drink in their hand, there were no complaints.

We shot the speeches and were even given a meal by David the hotel manager, who, because he was only working until 8, didn't get to show his party piece of singing 'Mack The Knife', or 'Smack The Wife' as he called it, when the DJ arrived.  Billy shot the throwing of the bouquet and that was it.  All done in ten hours.  I was exhausted, but I knew this was what I wanted to do.  For me photography is about telling stories with pictures, and a wedding is a pretty nice story to tell. 

I'm editing the photos today and I'll get a few of the best ones up, and then it's all about the next wedding!

I've only just started out, and I've got everything still to learn.  But I feel a little less embarrassed about telling people that I want to be a professional wedding photographer.....

Josh,