Sally & Chris - A Vibrant, Traditional Wedding at Home in Yorkshire (with nods to Kenya!) - Yorkshire Wedding Photography

“The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we’re all too young to know
But I
I love it when you give me things
And you
You ought to give me wedding rings”

— Peter Gabriel

I almost feel gluttonous with all of these incredible weddings I’m capturing. After a year of slowing way down, taking time, re-learning skills and living a relatively sensory minimalist experience, the colour and lights and beauty and incredible joy of the past few weeks has been extraordinary. I’m reminded again and again that this is truly my calling, the role I was born to play and I am well and truly HOME. I have banged on and on about how love is not cancelled - I’ve trumpeted about weddings and joy and marriage and was getting a bit sick of listening to myself because it felt like my impassioned cries were into an echo chamber and the desperation of WANTING to work and knowing that work was to be done was exhausting. I’ve felt with my whole heart for my couples the past year - tthe balancing act of wanting to celebrate something GOOD, something joyous, in a time when it could have felt an anathema to do so. Never mind the uncertainty and mixed messaging, the stop and start and red tape oh my goodness it was all too much. And still too little because what has sustained me and indeed most of my couples, is the promise of the sun shining again and unapologetically opening your arms to LOVE again.

And THIS is exactly what the effervescent Sally & wry, generous Chris did for their UNBELIEVABLE wedding day on Saturday. Sally and Chris began planning their wedding, not just in a pandemic, but from afar whilst living and working as teachers in Kenya. Immediately, the AWESOME Lucy Wright Events came on board and, despite distance and time zones, everything was smooth sailing and completely in hand due to Lucy’s expertise, vast-reaching events knowledge and ineffable and unflappable positive energy. Between Lucy and Sally’s dad Arthur holding down the fort at the venue (and family home) in Yorkshire, plus innumerable Zoom calls and liaising with suppliers - against all odds, Sally & Chris returned home from red-list Kenya, into hotel quarantine and released just in time to celebrate in the most beautiful English garden party-meets Kenyan tropics fashion. With a menu reflecting nods to traditional African cuisine, the (literally) magical stylings of Sam Fitton and his card decks, 90s pop tunes by the epic School Disco band and a colourful marquee setup of dreams, the rain miraculously stayed away and Sally and Chris truly had the wedding day of dreams.

I loved so much getting to know this amazing couple, two brilliant humans who serendipitously found each other on another continent but whose love trascends this big old messy world to bring together so many people in celebration. I gulped down all this joy and beauty greedily, I over-shot by a thousand frames and I loved every single minute of it.

Here’s a sneak peek of what we got up to…