Cakes #2

Here's a couple of pictures of Penny and Matt's West Indian wedding cake from last Friday, which was beautifully made by Penny's dad Euclid. What we want to know is how he got the raffia tied as neatly as that without marking the icing ...

Flowers on a mantlepiece ...

... done really well as usual by Lavender Green

Disco lights

We're still not sure if this particular effect is cutting-edge post-retro simplistic funky or simply a legacy of the 1980's ...

The Bit You Don't See #2

What you see here is two guys expertly putting the top on this rather nice cake, which has just come out of the chiller, immediately before the happy couple and their guests come down from the dining room to ceremonially cut it.

At that point, all they could do next was cross their fingers - because it's made of very soft chocolate sponge and cream, it's all chocolate on the outside, the top half is surprisingly heavy, and before it gets cut, that cake has to sit in a warm room with the heat from the fire on one side of it throughout at least ten minutes of AV presentation before anybody picks up a cake knife ...

Photographer at work #1

Here's a picture of Ann shooting over the parapet at the top of a multi-storey carpark in Belgravia (as you do) late yesterday evening, taking this picture of the frontage of the wedding venue ...

The New Slideshow Music

Well, we did it! After a string of emails and phone calls over the past few months, we finally got permission to use a piece of copyright music that we actually like to accompany the portfolio slideshow on our main site!

In case it toots your flute, you might like to note that it's a track called Anni Rose from the 2002 album Trancendence by Tulku.

The music now on the "people" and "things" slideshows is "Here With You" and "Fluidics" respectively, both of which are licensed royalty-free tracks by unknown musicians.

Ann's Pudding Picture #5

Here we see an example of the "Stand On Chesterfield And Hold Camera Over Head" genre, from Pam and Hugh's wedding at Eastwell Manor last week. For once we actually got to sample the dessert, and can report that Eastwell's Lemon Tart is delicious. Not as good as Ann's home-made lemon meringue pie, but certainly better than most ...

Formal Group Photos - The Big Mystery

OK, here we go again on the perennial subject of group photos, by which I mean the few we do at most weddings in which people are arranged into a tidy group which then smiles at the camera. Eventually.

After each of the first hundred or so weddings we did, we would go home trying to work out what we did wrong. We tried all sorts of tactics, some more subtle than others. And nothing we ever did made the slightest difference.

Why do they do it? Why is it that as soon as we've announced that the couple want us to crack on with the group photos, and we've told people that they're needed now for them, four women decide to do a loo run? The best man heads for the bar. Uncle Henry decides to go back to his room to change his shirt. Granny totters off for a lie down. The ushers vanish. And the young mum on Valium who parked the baby buggy in the aisle just before the bride walked down it decides to feed her youngest.

This of course leaves the bride and groom passing the time by talking to two deaf wrinklies and wondering where their guests are. Often the groom will then dispatch a couple of his chums to chase people up, but they will disappear too. And if one of the dads decides to help out, more often than not he will go down the same Black Hole Of Wedding Guests. As will the mum who then trots off to see where her husband went ...

We've long ago given up getting even a tiny bit stressed about it, because we know it's pretty much inevitable. We can give the couple a few pointers beforehand which might help matters, but we know that on the day, at 95% of weddings in England, the formal group photos will take longer than they should do simply because of guest apathy.

But why is it like this? What is it about Brits that when they're invited to a wedding and they've been told that the couple would like a photo with them, they don't want to play ball?

Does anybody know what the problem is?

Ann's Pudding Picture #4

Here we go with Ann's first Pudding Picture of 2006 ... tarrahhhh ... the entrance of the yummy-looking chocolate tart with orange sorbet at Vicky and Rebecca's civil partnership celebration, held at Sir Christopher Wren's House in Windsor.

Gay weddings

OK, I know they're not actually weddings but that's what most people refer to them as because apart from anything else, the correct terminology leaves a lot to be desired. However, one of our clients tells me that she and her partner have solved the problem of how to describe the change in their status after their civil partnership ceremony. They can't say they're getting married, so they're telling people that they're getting civilised :)

Anyhow, while a surprising number of UK wedding photographers seem to have a problem with civil partnerships, we're lucky enough to have done two already and to be looking forward to our third at the end of this month. The first was Karl and Juan's small but very smart celebration in Mayfair, and there's now a "20 from 1" from it on the pictures page of our main site.

Yesterday's event had maybe three times as many guests but was also Black Tie, and it featured the cake pictured here: a snow-covered mountain littered with empty champagne bottles down which our happy couple were skiing.

Apart from the cake though, we'll always remember Vicky and Rebecca's big day as the one on which, after the meal, came the traditional call "Pray silence for the father of the bride".

And both dads stood up to speak ...