Another beautiful Auchen Castle wedding

Auchen Castle weddings are always a delight! A beautiful, idyllic Scottish castle set within its own glorious grounds and surrounded by gorgeous woodland and the Dumfries hills. It’s no wonder this wedding photographer in Edinburgh enjoys the trip down here so much! Since my last Auchen castle wedding the venue has had a change of ownership but the same high standards of customer service remain and it’s a delight to work with the staff here!

I’ve photographed several I photographed the smallest wedding possible where there was only a bride and groom and the two witnesses ended up being myself and a member of weddings at Auchen Castle but you may recall I set a record last year whenthe Auchen Castle wedding team! However, for this wedding the guests numbers were considerably higher as Julie-ann and Jimmy’s families had all come across from Ireland. As you can imagine with the strong links and close proximity of the two countries its always a great day when the Irish come over to Scotland for a wedding, so I was really looking forward to photographing things.

I was booked to start about an hour before the ceremony through until the guests were to go for their wedding breakfast. As usual I arrived in plenty time and was able to have a good look around the castle and grounds just to double check if anything had changed since last time and also ascertain the lighting. The first photograph here shows how the day was shaping up to be warm and sunny which would be perfect for the outdoor ceremony. I also double checked the lighting for the group photographs as this is critical on bright sunny days as you cannot have people screwing up their faces and squinting into the camera. What I look for is a nice location where the group will be backlit. I know if the sun is particularly strong doing this can pose technical problems for some photographers but as from the beginning of next year I am teaming up with a couple of premier venues who have asked me to run photography courses and workshops, so feel free to book yourself onto one and I’ll happily show you how it’s done (just had to insert a free advert there, lol).

Many wedding photographers in Edinburgh and throughout the country have their own style and format for carrying out the group shots. For myself I prefer to keep things nice and relaxed and use the style you will see in the likes of Hello or OK magazine wedding. This is a nice and smooth formula and generally allows me to complete all the formal group photographs in around twenty minutes. With Julie-ann and Jimmy this all went perfectly and following the family group photographs I finished with a Big Group shot of all the guests on the Auchen Castle lawn.

For the bride and groom session we did my usual mix of classical, romantic, fun and contemporary photos. At such an elegant venue as
Auchen castle it’s nice to get some classical wedding images utilising the grandeur of the castle itself as such a gorgeous backdrop. Although these photos are posed, or directed, my aim is still to get the couple looking relaxed and natural as you can see from the images here. This is especially important as my style of working is for most of the day primarily reportage photography and it means both the formal group photographs and those from the bride and groom session will blend perfectly
with the whole days sequence. If you tend to over pose people or spend a lot of time on creating elaborate, sophisticated scenes it is very difficult to then marry these images into a finished album or Storybook.

Jimmy and Julie-ann asked us to finish up with some photographs of the Dining Room set up before everyone came in and sat down to eat and we also did a mock cake cutting with the great Auchen Castle ceremonial sword whilst we were there.