Weddings aren't cheap, and with the cost of pretty much everything having increased over the last few years, it's completely understandable that couples are looking carefully at where they can save money. There are dozens of things to pay for, some of them considerably more exciting than others, and eventually most couples have to decide what's important to them and where they're prepared to compromise.

One of the things I tell couples all the time is that your wedding isn't a photoshoot. You haven't invited all your favourite people, spent months planning everything and probably spent a frightening amount of money just so I can drag you around for three hours taking photographs. I want you to enjoy your wedding, enjoying it with everybody else, not spending half of it wondering when the photographer is finally going to leave you alone.

One of the decisions couples make fairly early when planning a wedding is where they're actually going to get married. For some, there isn't really a decision at all. They've always imagined walking down the aisle of a church. For others, having the ceremony and reception at the same hotel or wedding venue makes far more sense.

Having photographed weddings across North Yorkshire, Teesside and the North East for many years, I've covered plenty of both, and although the end result is exactly the same — two people getting married — the way the wedding day unfolds can feel surprisingly different.

When couples first start looking at wedding photography packages, one of the first decisions they have to make is how long they actually want their photographer there. Three hours might cover the ceremony and a few photographs afterwards. Five hours sounds like plenty. Then there’s eight hours, ten hours or full-day wedding photography, and suddenly you’re wondering whether you really need somebody wandering around with a camera for quite that long.

It’s a perfectly reasonable question, particularly when you’re trying to keep control of a wedding budget. But after photographing weddings for almost two decades, I think there’s another question worth asking at the same time: which parts of your wedding story are you happy not to have photographs of?