Getting Married in North Yorkshire? You’re Spoilt for Choice
I sometimes forget how lucky I am to work where I do.
I've been photographing weddings for 18 years now and, because I'm based in this part of the world, a huge number of those weddings have been across North Yorkshire. You get used to driving through the North York Moors on the way to work, heading towards the coast for a wedding in Whitby or Scarborough, or finding yourself halfway down a country lane looking for a wedding venue that you're absolutely certain didn't exist the last time you checked Google Maps.
Then every now and again I'll be standing outside a venue, cameras in hand, look around and think, actually, this isn't a bad office.
If you're getting married in North Yorkshire, you really are spoilt for choice. We've got coastline, countryside, moorland, castles, barns, country houses, hotels and some wonderfully quirky little places that don't fit neatly into any category at all. Two weddings can take place only a few miles apart and look completely different.
For me as a North Yorkshire wedding photographer, that's one of the things I love most about working here. I never feel as though I'm photographing the same wedding in the same surroundings every weekend.
A North Yorkshire wedding can look however you want it to
One of the nice things about North Yorkshire is that there isn't really a particular type of wedding you have to have here.
If your idea of the perfect wedding involves countryside, stone walls, open fields and the North York Moors stretching away behind you, you can have that. If you'd rather be beside the sea, you've got places such as Whitby and Scarborough. If you're looking for a beautiful country house, a converted barn or somewhere with acres of grounds to disappear into for photographs, you're hardly short of options there either.
I've photographed weddings at venues including Danby Castle Barn, Gisborough Hall, Grinkle Park, Rushpool Hall, Whinstone View, Hackness Grange and plenty of others across North Yorkshire and the surrounding area, and each one has its own personality.
That's important because I don't think choosing a wedding venue should simply be about finding the place with the prettiest photographs on its website.
You're going to spend a massive part of one of the biggest days of your life there. It needs to feel right for you.
I've photographed huge celebrations and much smaller, intimate weddings. I've photographed couples surrounded by hundreds of people and others who wanted something considerably quieter. I've worked in grand rooms, little registry offices, churches, barns and outdoors.
They all work.
What makes a wedding memorable has never really been the size of the building.
It's the people inside it.
You don't need to choose the photographer closest to your venue
When couples start searching for a wedding photographer in North Yorkshire, it's completely understandable to begin with location. You might search for a photographer near your venue, somebody in the nearest town or simply type North Yorkshire Wedding Photographer into Google and start working your way through what comes back.
Location matters to an extent, obviously. You probably don't need to fly somebody in from Australia to photograph your wedding in Whitby.
But once you've established that a photographer covers your area, I think there are considerably more important things to think about.
You're inviting somebody into an incredibly personal day.
They're going to be there while you're getting ready, during the ceremony, around your families, listening to the speeches and wandering amongst your guests. Depending on the wedding package you've chosen, you could spend ten or twelve hours with them.
So whether they're based 10 miles or 40 miles from your venue probably isn't going to make much difference.
Whether you actually like them might.
And, perhaps even more importantly, whether you like the way they see a wedding definitely will.
Find photography that feels like you
Photography is incredibly subjective.
Some couples love very posed, highly styled wedding photography. Others want something dramatic and editorial. Some want light and airy photographs, others prefer something much darker and moodier.
None of those approaches is wrong.
They're just different.
My own approach has always been much more about natural, relaxed wedding photography. I want to tell the story of what actually happened rather than spend the day constantly manufacturing things for the camera.
That doesn't mean I won't organise family photographs or help you when we go out for photographs together. I'm not going to abandon you in a field and shout “BE NATURAL!” from 50 yards away.
I'll give you direction when you need it.
What I don't want is for your memories of the wedding to become memories of me constantly moving you around and telling you what to do.
Some of the photographs that will eventually mean the most to you probably won't be the ones either of us planned. They'll be reactions during the ceremony, somebody laughing during the speeches, your parents watching you when you weren't looking, children doing something they definitely weren't supposed to be doing or a moment between two people that lasted for a couple of seconds.
That's why documentary wedding photography has always suited the way I see weddings.
The spectacular photograph has its place.
So does the quiet one.
North Yorkshire doesn't always behave itself
There is one thing worth mentioning if you're planning a North Yorkshire wedding.
The weather couldn't care less about your plans.
I've seen days where the forecast has been dreadful and we've somehow ended up with glorious sunshine. I've seen beautiful mornings turn into sideways rain. I've photographed on the coast when the wind has had very different ideas about what somebody's veil should be doing, and there are days on the Moors when the landscape seems to change every ten minutes.
Personally, I think that's part of it.
I don't want couples spending the week before their wedding staring at five different weather apps and slowly losing the will to live because one of them has displayed a little rain cloud.
We'll deal with whatever happens.
If we get beautiful sunshine, brilliant. If we get dramatic clouds, they can look fantastic. If there's a break in the rain, we can use it. If the weather is genuinely horrible all day, then I'll work with the venue and what's available indoors.
A good wedding gallery shouldn't depend upon getting the perfect sunset.
And some of my favourite photographs have come from days when the weather definitely wasn't behaving itself.
The coast gives us something completely different
Being based near the North Yorkshire coast means I've also spent a lot of time photographing weddings around places such as Whitby, Saltburn and Scarborough.
Coastal weddings have a completely different feel to a country-house wedding or a barn in the middle of the countryside.
Whitby in particular is one of those places where you can turn a corner and suddenly find a completely different photograph. You've got the harbour, the old streets, the piers, the Abbey sitting above the town and, inevitably, a few tourists wondering why somebody in a wedding dress has just appeared beside them.
Scarborough gives you another completely different backdrop, while Saltburn is somewhere I've photographed for years and know incredibly well.
But I don't think the location should ever overpower the people.
There's always a temptation when you've got an impressive landscape to make the photograph entirely about the scenery. I want you to recognise North Yorkshire in the photographs, but I still want the wedding to be the important part.
You're not there to model for the North Yorkshire tourist board.
Although if they want to send me a cheque, I'm open to negotiations.
Then there's the countryside
Move inland and everything changes again.
The North York Moors and surrounding countryside give us some incredible wedding venues and, as a photographer, an enormous amount to work with.
Places such as Danby Castle Barn feel completely at home in their surroundings. Grinkle Park has a very different character. Gisborough Hall gives you something different again, and venues such as Hackness Grange and Whinstone View each bring their own opportunities.
I don't arrive at every venue with a mental checklist of the same photographs I'm going to recreate.
That would get boring remarkably quickly.
I'll have ideas and I'll know locations that work particularly well, especially at venues I've photographed before, but the light will be different, the weather will be different and, most importantly, the people are different.
That's what makes every wedding its own thing.
Knowing an area helps, but knowing weddings matters more
There's definitely an advantage to photographing weddings somewhere you know.
I know the North Yorkshire coast. I know how quickly conditions can change on the Moors. I've worked at many of the venues across the area and I know plenty of little places that can work brilliantly for photographs.
But I also don't believe a photographer needs to have photographed your exact venue 25 times before they're capable of doing a good job.
I've photographed new venues throughout my career, and I still enjoy doing it.
The important bit is knowing how to photograph a wedding.
After 18 years, I've dealt with ceremonies running late, disappearing guests, changing weather, dark rooms, blazing sunshine, speeches happening somewhere completely different to where everybody thought they were happening and wedding schedules that have become largely fictional by lunchtime.
That's wedding photography.
Knowing where the pretty tree is at a venue is useful.
Knowing what to do when the entire day changes is considerably more useful.
Getting married in North Yorkshire
If you're currently planning a wedding here, enjoy looking around.
Visit the venues rather than judging everything from photographs. Stand in the ceremony room. Walk around the grounds. Talk to the staff. Imagine your own friends and family actually being there.
And when it comes to choosing your photographer, do much the same thing.
Look beyond the first impressive photograph on a homepage and spend some time looking through their work. Look at the people in the photographs. Look at the moments between the obvious moments. Look at how they photograph ceremonies, guests, speeches and ordinary parts of a wedding as well as the big portraits.
Then talk to them.
Because ultimately you're not just buying photographs.
You're choosing the person who's going to be standing beside you for a significant chunk of your wedding day.
North Yorkshire gives us some absolutely beautiful places to get married, but after photographing weddings here for 18 years, I still don't think the venue is what makes the photographs.
Give me a beautiful venue and I'll absolutely make the most of it.
Give me lovely light and I'll probably get slightly overexcited.
Give me a North Yorkshire sunset and I'll definitely drag you outside for five minutes.
But give me two people enjoying their wedding, surrounded by the people who matter to them, and that's where the photographs really come from.
That's what I'm looking for.
And whether your wedding is overlooking the North Yorkshire coast, tucked away in the countryside, in a castle, a hotel, a barn or a registry office, that's the part of the story I want to photograph.
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