The wedding venue question I can never answer

I’m sure I am not the only wedding photographer in Scotland who gets asked “which is the best wedding venue you’ve ever photographed at?” I get asked this question fairly regularly and I must admit I never know what to say! lol

I am privileged to attend weddings at some of the finest, grandest and most magnificent venue’s in the country. Many of these I’d already established a fondness for some years ago when I was more involved with commercial and editorial photography. I have always had a love of history and so it was a joy to be commissioned to travel throughout Scotland photographing our enchanting Castles, Palaces and fortresses for magazines, brochures, books and advertising. It was also extremely exciting to work on the primetime ITV television series “Britain’s Favourite View” as photographic consultant for Scotland.

However, I find it impossible to pick any one individual venue as ‘the best’. They are all so different and have their own individual character which is brought to life by the personality of the wedding party. And whilst it is true that a wonderfully dramatic venue, like a castle or palace, provides a stunning backdrop for some superb photographs, even the smaller and less high profile venue’s have their own distinctive ambience that makes each one unique for differing reasons. Anyway, given that I was asked the above question earlier this week at a wedding event, but specifically in relation to Scottish Castles, I’ll try and stick to this as a theme, lol.

I cant name a ‘best’ or ‘favourite’ wedding venue so I’m posting some photos of some prestigious historical buildings I’ve been commissioned to photograph commercially or for magazines in the past and then found myself back at them more recently photographing weddings. I’ve had great difficulty whittling the list down to ten or eleven, so that might give you some idea how hard it is when people ask me for a favourite, lol. I’ve also not included any wedding photographs, so these are straight shots of the venue on its own. I hope you might find them interesting. Feel free to leave any comments (yes, I’ve actually discovered how to switch commenting on! lol).

Please note: I will be exhibiting at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange wedding fair next weekend, 6th and 7th of March, so if you are looking for an Edinburgh wedding photographer or anything else wedding related, from wedding chair covers in Edinburgh to gorgeous bridal dresses, come along and visit my stand no.61, towards the front adjacent to the fashion show stage.

Wedding planning and Scottish Castles

Couples have been coming to Scotland to get married in enchanting Scottish castles for decades. But personally I have seen a marked increase in castle weddings since Madonna and Guy Ritchie held their wedding in a Scottish Castle at the end of 2000. All the hype and media attention beamed images of their wedding around the world and really showed how glamorous and magnificent our Castles and fortresses are and what stunning wedding venues they make! Of course, for my own business it helps that I’ve photographed numerous Scottish Castles both for magazines and publishing houses as well as weddings, so many people connect my name with this type of photography even before they’ve seen any of my photographs. I sometimes even receive bookings based purely upon my reputation from couples who say they don’t feel it necessary to see any images before booking as they don’t think I would get published so extensively if I wasn’t one of the best. I must say that this is very good for my ego, but I would still recommend looking through my work before booking me, lol.

As a wedding photographer in Scotland, and as you know from previous blog posts, I’ve had families coming across from the States, France, Italy and a little closer to home Ireland in recent years to get married in a Scottish Castle. This summer will be no different, and this week I’ve met up for pre-wedding consults and engagement shoots with brides and grooms getting married at Melville Castle, Dalhousie Castle, Edinburgh Castle and Blackness Castle.

Yesterday, I was with Karen and Daniel who are getting married at Melville Castle on June, 25th. Karen lives in Ohio, USA, and has been incredibly busy planning a magnificent wedding from afar. Daniel lives a little closer to home down in Reading. A lot of Karen’s planning and prepping has been done online but she was over this week meeting up with many of her wedding suppliers and vendors.

It was several months ago I first met Karen and Daniel. They were in Scotland looking for a venue and had visited Melville Castle coincidentally at the same time I was doing a photo shoot there. They fell in love with the castle and booked it for their wedding day. After making all the booking arrangements with Arlene they caught sight of one of my wedding albums and had a look through, immediately falling in love with the photography. Arlene spotted Karen picking up one of my business cards and told her that the Edinburgh wedding photographer whose album she was looking at happened to be the one who was outside photographing Hamish and Casper. So they made an appointment to meet up with me the following day.

We met up in, what is normally, a quiet hotel for a coffee and a chat. But as we were sat at a table looking through my sample albums two coaches full of Chinese tourists drew up and exited at the hotel entrance. The Chinese visitors all then piled straight into the hotel and as there was so many of them began to swarm through into the lounge area where we were sat. When they saw the three of us sat looking through wedding albums they all gathered around our table and started looking at them as well over Karen and Daniel’s shoulders. I’m not joking, but there must have been about two hundred of them! If that wasn’t bad enough they then started taking out camera’s and taking photos of my wedding albums! Well I was very embarrassed I can tell you but fortunately Daniel and Karen saw the funny side of it and we were able to have another laugh about it yesterday. I told them in all the years I have used that particular hotel that was the only time I’d ever experienced anything like that! And I’ve never had it happen again either, lol!

Karen won’t be back in Scotland again before the wedding day so we had a chat about their day’s photography, album design and a few other things, then did a half hour photo shoot, with Melville Castle’s general manager complaining about how come, as I am there so regularly, I’ve never done a photo session with him? Hmm…I have a slot next Wednesday afternoon ;)

Anyway here’s a couple of photos from yesterday and if you check back in June I’ll post a few from their wedding too. The next wedding show at Melville Castle is March 28th if you want to come along and meet up with me and see some albums and have your photo taken with the general manager!

Pre-wedding engagement shoots

Well the last week has been primarily made up of portrait and engagement sessions. I’m going to tell you about the engagement sessions as this is something I now include with most of my wedding photography packages.

Pre-wedding engagement shoots are great for both the engaged couple and for myself as well as being a lot of fun! I had five this past week with couples who are getting married later in the year. I’ve included a couple of images from the last one with Christine and Gary at Melville Castle on Saturday morning. Christine and Gary are getting married at Melville Castle in December so the engagement session gives them a taster of their wedding photography whetting their appetites for the forthcoming big day. It’s always nice to do the shoot at the wedding venue although not absolutely necessary. Three of this weeks sessions were at the couple’s wedding venue with the other two being at selected locations around Edinburgh which I use quite often and are a closely guarded secret, lol! It’s quite funny when on occasions I get other wedding photographer’s in Edinburgh asking me for advice on good locations. I usually give them a copy of the guidebook “In & Around Edinburgh” which I did the photography for as well as some writing, and ask them if they want me to sign it, lol.

The actual session itself is going to be very similar to the bride and groom set I will do on the wedding day. But being an engagement shoot we can afford to be a little more laidback and also experiment with a few things too. I usually take anywhere between twenty to forty five minutes, depending on the couple, the location and the mood, which is fairly close to what the wedding timing will be. Of course, with an engagement shoot there is going to be very little reportage photography, so virtually everything will be posed and set up. However, this enables me to give the couple some coaching and posing tips as we go through the session which builds their confidence for the big day.

We usually end up with around 40-50 photographs from a 45 minute session. And, just as on a wedding day, I’ll take a good mix of stylish, contemporary images as well as some nice relaxed, informal ones. We’ll try out a few classic wedding poses and we’ll also throw in some experimental ones too.

On Saturday at Melville Castle I’d arranged to start at 10.30 in the morning which meant we pretty much had the castle to ourselves. It was damp and rainy which was great as it created beautiful, soft, flattering light which is perfect for portraiture. I started off in the castle’s lobby and set Gary and Christine up in a typical, traditional wedding pose talking them through some relaxation techniques which help them to relax in front of the camera lens. We did two or three minutes on standing poses and then a couple of minutes on sitting. And then we went for a wander around some of the nooks and crannies that I know so well. We finished off at the main castle entrance. I wanted some outdoor shots, particularly around the main entrance, as the north facing side of the castle is always in the shade and the light is nice and soft.

Several of my couples mentioned that they didn’t actually have a really nice, professional photograph of themselves. So its nice to use the pre-wedding session to produce something special which can be enlarged and mounted and hung somewhere nice in their home. It also gives the opportunity for family to obtain a really nice pre-wedding photograph, too, or indeed a set of photographs. I put all the images into a private online gallery for the couples and they can then send the link through to their family and friends who can then place any orders online simply and easily.

I’ve got a few more engagement sessions I’m looking forward to coming up throughout this month at various venue’s in Edinburgh and also Newcastle - yes, some wedding photographers in Scotland do venture down into England, lol! Again most of them are with couples who are getting married this summer. I always think February being Valentine’s month is an ideal time for having them, too. Anyway, I’ll no doubt tell you more about them in due course and post a few more pics.

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.