Lothian Chambers Registry Office and St Columbas Church Wedding. Recently I’ve had a couple brides comment to me that one of the reasons they hired me is because they like that they put quite a lot of photos from each wedding on my website. Some photographers put a few, some only five or so, and I believe rightfully so that if the photographer is only putting five photos online then maybe you need to be a little suspicious.

I usually post around 30 or so photos from each wedding (unless I’m really busy then it will be less) so you can get a greater appreciation for what happened on the day and also that you can see I can take more than just half a dozen good/awesome/amazing/you decide wedding photos.

Just two weeks ago I photographed a wedding for Sophie and Saul at Lothian Chambers followed by a reception at St Columba’s Free Church of Scotland (St Columba’s for short). Sophie is from Edinburgh while Saul is from Miami but interestingly they met while living in China. They now live in Madrid (very international couple) but working with them you can see they are a really awesome couple together. Sometimes couples, maybe it’s because of nerves, don’t seem to want to be that close to each other on the day while some couples are camera shy. Sophie and Saul were neither, both wanted and had a lot of fun in front of the camera and there were laughs (Saul wore a stars and stripes thong), romance (Saul cried during the wedding ceremony) to truly epic moments (the big group shot which is explained below).

There were 80 people at the wedding, so quite a large wedding, but everyone was really nice and really well behaved so my day was really easy. A couple things that we did a bit differently were capturing a first look shot. We arranged to do this in the square in front of the Writers Museum and normally this square is quite quiet but on their day it was really busy so there was absolutely no way of capturing a whole sequence of shots without a few tourists in but it didn’t matter. The other thing we did, at my suggestion, was a receiving line. Because of the first look shot, we ended up doing all the couple’s shots before the wedding (could more couples please do this!) so I suggested doing a receiving line at the entrance to the City of Edinburgh suite and it was really worthwhile.

The above image pretty much sums up Sophie and Saul’s wedding. With it being quite a large wedding party I decided we should do the big group shot in front of St Giles Cathedral but the square between the chambers and St Giles was super busy with tourists. So I’m there trying to do the main group shot, which worked out great anyway, and all the tourists crowded around to take photos so Saul beckoned everyone to join in. What was a 80 people group shot easily doubled in size and everyone was laughing.

I’ve photographed a few wedding receptions at St Columba’s Free Church of Scotland and I think it’s one of the best reception venues around. It’s at the top of the Royal Mile, has great views of Grassmarket and Lauriston Place, the function room itself is big and bright and it’s really easy to get to. There are fancier venues around but every wedding reception has been absolutely perfect in every respect.