Myra and Simon's wedding at Norton House

Yes, I know I’m wayyyyyyyyyyyyy behind with my blogging! Lots been going on during April and May! Weddings, engagement
shoots, the first ever Vow Renewal registration in Edinburgh (I’ll tell you about that soon), wedding fairs, and lots and lots of meetings with future bride and grooms. As you may know Radio Forth has been running its 2011 Win Your Wedding contest the last few weeks. This is the biggest prize on Scottish Radio with the lucky couple winning their entire wedding - the venue, wedding dress, groomswear, cake, cars, flowers, hair and make-up, honeymoon, and pretty much everything else and I was chosen by Forth Radio to provide the photography for the prize. Well the
contest has now come to a close and the lucky couple are Diane and Steven from Dunfermline! But throughout the contest, and particularly since it came to a conclusion I’ve had myriads of enquiries and appointments come rolling in due to the huge exposure! In addition to this, STV ran a small wedding slot on The Hour program with Michelle McManus and Stephen Jardine for two weeks on the run up to the Royal Wedding and I was one of twelve photographers in Scotland featured by them on the STV website which also produced a plethora of enquiries and bookings. So all in all I’m very happy! And that’s my excuse for being behind with the blogging! lol

Anyway, as Norton House Hotel is the venue for the Win Your Wedding contest let me tell you about Myra and Simon’s wedding at Norton House Hotel a couple of weeks ago. This will be the first of five weddings for me this year at Norton House, unless of course I pick up a couple more bookings here towards the end of the year. Norton House is a well known wedding venue amongst Edinburgh wedding photographer’s having beautiful grounds and a well organised wedding team. The ceremony itself was held at Corstorphine Old Parish church, a venue I’ve photographed at several
times before (Paula and Gordon’s wedding was my last one here). It’s quite a magnificent building and makes for incredibly atmospheric photographs for photographer’s who don’t mind working in low light. As the minister here knows me well she allows me to use the small gallery that over looks the aisle. There is the tiniest, narrowest stone staircase that winds up to the gallery, very similar to those of the higher level of Scot’s Monument, except this is even tighter. Because of its tightness it’s impossible to get up and down quickly, so as it was more important for me to be working at ground level we put Diane up in the gallery with the telephoto lens which enabled us to get great mix of different angles and views of the proceedings.

Following the ceremony coaches were laid on for the guests to make their way to Norton House while Myra and Simon used the wedding car. You may
recognize the car from Gillian and Gary’s wedding as it was the same one. Ecosse Classic Wedding cars are one of the most well known and highly regarded wedding car specialists and all wedding photographer’s in Edinburgh love it when they hear their clients have booked their cars with Ecosse as they know they’ll get beautiful 'wedding car' shots! The wedding car arrived at Norton House a little ahead of the coach which allowed us to get our car shots before all the guests arrived.

After a few drinks (the wedding guests not me btw, lol) we then took the bridal party down to the huge lawn in front of the Ballroom for the group shots. When we finished I did a few photos with Myra and Simon whilst still amongst the flora and fawna of the gardens. One of my favourites is the black and white shot shown here. The background here is simply the foliage of the trees that I positioned Myra and Simon in front of. In the post production I converted the image to monochrome but applied an infra red effect which along with the tilt of the shot gives a very contemporary and modern feel to the image.
We finished the bride and groom session on the steps and within the entrance to Norton House and then we were running in to be ready for the cutting of the cake.

Once everyone was seated Simon and Myra were piped in and taken over to their wedding cake, which was baked and created by Simon’s mum. We got the cake cutting shots and then moved around for the speeches. I have to say, Simon’s brother, Alistair, gave one of the funniest speeches I’ve ever heard! The way he recounted boyhood stories of them both, particularly the hair cutting by their mother account, was hilarious! All in all it was another wonderful wedding and I’m looking forward to be being back here again in July.
The next two weddings for me are at Melville Castle on Friday and Barony Castle on Saturday. Both I’m fairly sure will find their way onto the blog at some point but I’m not committing to when! lol