Redhouse Barn Photos

With full-day coverage I aim to be at the venue a couple of hours before the ceremony, and the drive through the Worcestershire countryside to Redhouse Barns is a lovely way to start any working day. Up in the bridal suite, Rosie and her ten bridesmaids were mid-preparation in matching pyjama robes, with hair and makeup in full swing and the big windows flooding the room with natural light.

The grown-ups were not the only ones getting ready.

The littlest members of the wedding party had their own moments worth documenting, tiny shoes laced up, a helping hand for granddad, and a sign carried with the seriousness only a page boy can manage.

The redbrick barn was full and buzzing by the time I took my position, with Connor waiting at the front, lit by the daylight pouring through the sliding doors. Then the music started, and Rosie arrived on her dad’s arm for the handover every wedding photographer quietly holds their breath for.

Husband and wife, announced to a barn full of applause. While Rosie and Connor signed the register, the guests got their own cameras out for keepsake photos, always one of my favourite candid moments of any redhouse barn wedding to catch from the side.

With the ceremony done, everyone spilled out to the rear courtyard for drinks and live music, with the gardens and open countryside stretching away behind. Rosie and Connor had laid on garden games too, giant Jenga, table tennis and a football knocking about, which kept the guests happily occupied and gave me a courtyard full of relaxed, candid barn wedding photos to work through, pints, canapes and all.

Then I stole Rosie and Connor away to the secluded gardens for their portrait session. I always let the couple decide how long this part runs, some want half an hour, some want five minutes and a drink. We took a relaxed ten, wandering between the backdrops scattered around the grounds, and let the photos come to us.

Then came the entrance. Rosie and Connor had arranged a saxophonist to play them into the wedding breakfast over a fast track, and the room simply detonated. Guests on their feet, cheering, children flung into the air, and the newlyweds dancing their way to the top table. In more than a decade of photographing weddings, it remains one of the most electric scenes I have shot.

My camera barely pointed at the speakers. The real photographs live in the faces listening, Rosie welling up at her dad’s words one minute, Connor creased with laughter the next.

As the evening guests arrived, the hugs came thick and fast, and the photo booth Rosie and Connor had set up started earning its keep. Props on, poses struck, and a steady stream of zany group shots that I happily photographed people posing for.

Rosie is a proper music lover, so alongside the DJ she had hired a trumpeter and a drummer to drive the dance floor, and it worked exactly as intended. At one point Connor commandeered the drum kit himself, which tells you everything about how the night was going.