Love is NOT cancelled - In Praise of the Teeny-Tiny Wedding and a Wedding Photographer's Perspective

2020 has been a year of re-birth, of re-incarnation, of re-setting. And like all birth stories, it’s been violent and messy, terrifying and enlightening. As wedding suppliers we’ve had to adapt our offerings - adapt or perish in the most dramatic of fashions. 2020 has been a rallying cry for the thousands of makers and creators, suppliers and chefs, servers and artists and entertainers, heavy-lifters and calm-the-bride-downers, planners and coordinators and magicians and dress-sellers, light-the-room-uppers, cleaners and every single large and small (but no less freaking important) human YOU rely on to create the fairytale ballroom or intimate woodland wedding of your goddamn dreams. We have come together as an industry and we’re upset and feel forgotton and sometimes taken advantage of or for granted because at the end of the day we are HUMAN and (largely) small businesses or family businesses or take the business out of this because we are still HUMAN and for the past years or months all we have wanted and worked our butts off for is to give you an incredible wedding day. Because weddings and the exhilarating theatrical JOY they encapsulate are our passion and our livelihood. We are loyal only to YOU: the people getting married and are desperate to make sure we get it right for you.

At the end of July, I was fortunate enough to shoot a 30-person ‘Covid-kosher’ wedding and at the time I wrote this:

What makes a wedding? At it’s very core, it is simply: two people in love, exchanging vows that profess this love and commitment led by an officient and witnessed by those entrusted with the task. Expanded to a modern age, a wedding is where you dress to the nines, you eat and drink and dance and make merry - the vows are exulted with a dazzling celebration that months, yes even years, are spent planning and plotting and agonising over the details that will be immortalised by a professional team up to the task of transforming your vision into tangible memories. A wedding is florals and scents and meticulous choices - it is a veritable theatrical production with many many cogs and spinning plates that are coordinated and adorned to the very hilt. It’s being in the middle of a mob of your favourite people, arms thrown around each other, shouting Bruno Mars lyrics at the top of your lungs past the point of caring how dirty your dress is or that your makeup has been kissed or sweated off because it’s your favourite day with your favourite people and at this moment you are INFINITE.

What is a wedding in the midst of a global pandemic? Start again at the beginning.

Weddings in the time of COVID are something new - they are stripped of their finery, carrying a touch more brevity than merriment. A wedding now, as I’m slowly learning, is filled with no less joy than before but now that joy is concentrated - nay crystallised - into it’s very essence. A wedding now is simply two people and I forget the rest.

If that 30-person wedding had half the numbers like current guidance allows, the memory of that day would be no less sweet to the couple who were just so thrilled to hitch their wagons together and adjoin a life.

And I get it! I really really do get it! Your wedding day is something you’ve dreamt and agonised about - you’ve planned and saved and pinned and booked and all you want is the wedding exactly as you’ve envisioned, perhaps since you were a child. And, as an eternal optimist, I believe to my very core that these weddings WILL happen again. Of course they will! And if you’re willing and able and patient enough, definitely ride out the storm to clearer skies! We’ll still be here for you to create that magical, perfect day!

But if you can’t spend another moment emailing and postponing and stressing and crying and all you want is to be freaking married already, then go back to the beginning. Marry now, party later. Wear that beautiful hand-beaded/eyelash lace confection of a dress/jumpsuit/swimming costume that felt perfect when you first tried it on - WEAR IT TWICE! Go back to the start, a wedding is simply two people and I forget the rest.

And if you’re looking for some gorgeous wedding photo inspiration of what I mean, check out a selection of elopements and ‘covid-kosher’ pandemic weddings below, I’m sharing my favourites.

Whatever you decide to do, however and whenever you decide to finally tie the knot, I’ll be here ready to capture those very priceless memories for you and preserve this INSANE time we’re living. Because love is not cancelled, JOY is not cancelled.

Get in touch, I have literally nowhere else to be.