Weddings and albums at Melville Castle

I’ve talked a number of times over the last year about the changes and improvements at Melville Castle under the owners, and it has really been exciting being involved with it. Over the last few weeks they have developed a completely new website together with a brand new wedding brochure, which can also be seen online via their website, and it has been a pleasure providing the major part of the photography for both of them.

But within Melville Castle too they have a few wedding albums from previous weddings I’ve photographed their which visitors can browse through. This is mainly for the benefit of brides and grooms who are interested in booking Melville Castle for their wedding as it means they can see real life wedding albums from Melville Castle weddings which will give them an idea of how great their own photographs will look if they decide to book Melville Castle as their wedding venue.

I was chatting with Arlene, Melville Castle’s wedding coordinator, just before Christmas and we both felt it would be great idea to do a kind of “Best of Melville Castle Weddings” album, particularly highlighting some of the most recent weddings since the new décor has been in place. As regular readers of my blog know I love album and wedding book design, so I was delighted to get stuck into it. It is always nice to work with the top Scottish wedding venue’s and supply the photography for them but with their website and brochures I simply do the photography and someone else then takes my images away and works on the design where as producing a showcase album the whole design process and end product is mine, so it is particularly satisfying.


I decided to do a modern Coffee Table Book which I felt would complement the current albums at Melville Castle. The beauty of Coffee Table Books is that, unlike any other wedding album, you can have full bleed double page spreads. These look incredibly impressive, and being a full 18 x 12 inches are large enough to really show off the high quality of the photographs. You then have the option of adding in complementing images as insets, which is particularly effective with a real life wedding storybook, or simply have the double page spread as a dramatic stand alone image. Most books, of course, will have a mix of these. Anyway, I got the book finished last week and dropped in on Friday so you can now find it in the entrance hall. I’ve posted a couple of sample pages here from one of my other Wedding Books, and there is a page from the new Melville album itself.

The above album procedure was a little different to when I design an album or a wedding book for a bride and groom. The Melville Castle book is completely my design with no input from anyone else. But with an album from a real wedding I make sure to involve the bride and groom in the whole design process. I have a good discussion with them prior to their wedding about their idea’s on how they’d like their album to look, which means I can shoot several photos from the wedding specifically with page design in mind, and it also means I can get my initial draft of their album as close as possible to what they want. Throughout the design process I let them see proofs of the pages and they can make as many alterations as they wish. I know many wedding photographers in Edinburgh, as well as the rest of the country, usually allow up to two or three changes, but I don’t place any limit on the number of amendments as I want them to be absolutely and perfectly happy with everything about it. Which they always are!


The other exciting development I’ve been involved with from the start of the new year is the launch of another wedding photography website. My main website, as well as containing information and galleries promoting my business, also hosts private galleries which are used for couples after the wedding day. These cannot be seen by visitors to my website unless you have the private address or password. However, there is a limit on how many images can be hosted by the website servers and last year with so many weddings I came close to that limit. So, I decided to build a new website which will give me double the amount of image space across both public and private galleries as well as being able to promote my wedding photography and attract new clients.

The plan is to use my main website for 'local' weddings in Edinburgh and also Newcastle (which is where my family live) and the new website will cater for the other weddings I photograph throughout Scotland. Please have a look at: wedding photographer Scotland. And feel free to leave any comments.

I have no weddings this week, but I do have a couple of pre-wedding engagement shoots which I'm looking forward and also a few portrait photography sessions in Edinburgh.