Ian & Karen’s Twilight Wedding at Grinkle Park Hotel
It’s always good to be back at Grinkle Park Hotel, a venue I’ve photographed weddings at for many years now, and this time it was for Ian and Karen’s Twilight wedding. Rather than having photography running from preparations first thing in the morning right through until late at night, a Twilight wedding gives you a more compact wedding day, with everything happening later and the photography concentrating on the parts of the day that matter most to the couple.
Ian and Karen had chosen Grinkle Park for the whole thing, which works particularly well for this kind of wedding because once everyone arrives there really isn’t any need to go anywhere else. You’ve got the hotel itself, the grounds and plenty of different places for photographs, but more importantly everyone can simply settle in and enjoy the wedding rather than spending part of the day travelling between different locations.
A Twilight Wedding at Grinkle Park
Twilight weddings have become something I’m photographing more regularly, and I can completely understand why they appeal to some couples. Not everybody wants or needs a photographer with them from early in the morning, and not every wedding needs ten or twelve hours of photography to tell its story.
For Ian and Karen, the later start meant the photography was concentrated around the wedding itself. I was there to photograph the ceremony, their guests, the family photographs and some time with the two of them around Grinkle, as well as all the natural bits and pieces happening in between.
That’s really what shorter wedding coverage should be about. It isn’t trying to squeeze a full traditional wedding day into fewer hours and rush everybody through it. It’s about deciding which parts of the day are important to you and making sure there is enough time to photograph those properly.
Photographing Ian & Karen Around Grinkle Park
One of the advantages of photographing a wedding at Grinkle Park is that there are plenty of options when it comes to taking the couple away for some photographs without disappearing for ages. I’ve worked there enough times to know the grounds well, so we can have a wander, use a few different areas and still get Ian and Karen back to their guests without turning their wedding into a photoshoot.
As always, I wanted their photographs to feel relaxed rather than spending ages putting them into different poses. I’ll choose where we go, look at the light and background and give a bit of direction when it’s needed, but after that I’d much rather let a couple talk, laugh and interact with each other. It gives me photographs that actually look like them rather than photographs that could belong to any couple.
And then, of course, there was Karen’s red umbrella.
Before anybody looks at the photographs and assumes we were dodging the rain, we weren’t. Karen simply loves red umbrellas, so naturally one had to make an appearance in the wedding photographs. To be fair, against the grounds and surroundings at Grinkle it certainly wasn’t going to disappear quietly into the background, and it gave us something a little different that was completely personal to Karen.
Those little details are often what I enjoy about real weddings. They don’t necessarily come from a wedding checklist or something somebody has seen online; they’re simply there because the couple likes them, and years later they become part of what makes the photographs immediately recognisable as their wedding.
The People Are Still the Most Important Part
As lovely as Grinkle Park is, and as much as I enjoy finding different places around the hotel and grounds for photographs, the venue is ultimately the backdrop. The wedding itself comes from Ian and Karen and the people they invited to share it with them.
That’s why I’m always watching what’s happening around me rather than concentrating solely on the obvious photographs. Weddings are full of conversations, reactions, laughter and little moments between people that can disappear almost as quickly as they happen. Quite often the couple won’t even know some of those moments took place until they see their photographs afterwards.
It’s also one of the reasons I enjoy photographing the time around the wedding breakfast. Everybody has settled down by then, people are chatting and enjoying themselves and there’s usually plenty happening around the room. The staff at Grinkle are working away in the background keeping everything moving while the guests can simply get on with enjoying the wedding.
I’ve worked alongside the team at Grinkle Park many times over the years, and Paul, Tammy and the rest of the staff always put an enormous amount of work into the weddings there. As somebody who gets to see both the guest side of a wedding and quite a lot of what happens behind the scenes, you notice just how much work goes into making everything appear effortless.
A Different Way of Planning a Wedding Day
I don’t think there is one correct way of planning a wedding anymore, and Ian and Karen’s day is another good example of that. Some couples want preparations photographed in the morning and coverage right through until everyone is on the dance floor, while other couples simply don’t need all of that.
A Twilight wedding can be a really good option when you want the ceremony and celebrations to happen later in the day and would rather concentrate your photography around that part of the wedding. You still have time for the ceremony, family photographs, relaxed photographs together and plenty of natural photographs of everybody enjoying themselves, but without paying for hours of coverage you don’t particularly want.
The photography itself doesn’t change because the coverage is shorter either. I’m still approaching the wedding in exactly the same way, looking for the same moments and putting the same work into the finished photographs. The difference is simply how much of the wedding story I’m there to photograph.
Ian and Karen had planned the wedding that suited them, and that’s ultimately what matters. It was their Twilight wedding, at a venue they’d chosen, surrounded by their own family and friends, with enough time for us to create some lovely photographs without photography taking over the evening.
And yes, we even found time for the red umbrella.
Planning Your Own Wedding at Grinkle Park?
If you’re getting married at Grinkle Park Hotel and you’re looking for relaxed, natural wedding photography without spending half of your wedding day posing for the camera, I’d love to hear what you’ve got planned. Whether you’re having a Twilight wedding like Ian and Karen or celebrating for the whole day, we can have a chat about your plans, how much photography you actually need and what’s important to the two of you.
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