A Family Wedding at West Tower, Ormskirk – Grace & Nathan

Grace and Nathan’s wedding at West Tower in Ormskirk was one of those days where the weather seemed to get the memo. A beautiful, hot summer day, a brilliant group of family and friends, and plenty going on from the moment everyone arrived until well into the night.

Night time portrait of Grace and Nathan in front of West Tower, a beautiful Lancashire country house.

Grace spent the morning getting ready with her friends, and rather than having a full team of hair and make-up artists, they did it themselves. There was something lovely about everyone getting ready together, chatting, helping each other out and enjoying those last few hours before the ceremony.

Nathan had his own slightly different version of wedding preparations. He got ready in the yurt. It’s not every groom who can say that.

With everyone ready, it was time to head inside for the ceremony. Grace and Nathan were married in West Tower’s Ballroom, surrounded by their family and friends. After all the anticipation of the morning, it was great to see the two of them finally together and officially married.

Once the ceremony was over, everyone headed outside onto the terrace for canapés and drinks. With the sun shining and plenty of people to catch up with, it was the perfect chance for everyone to relax and enjoy the afternoon.

This is also where I like to leave people to it for a bit.

Weddings are about spending time with your people, not being dragged away from them every five minutes because there’s another photograph to take. I’ll get the important family photographs done — the ones with parents, grandparents and the people you absolutely want in your album — and then we can get on with the day.

Our Bride and Groom in the woodland glade.

For Grace and Nathan’s couple portraits, we headed into the woodland glade, and what a choice of backdrop.

The glade was surrounded by daffodils, giving us a beautiful burst of spring colour while still keeping the photographs feeling natural. We took a short wander together, made some lovely portraits of the two of them and then got them straight back to their guests.

That’s the beauty of a quick portrait session. You don't need to disappear for an hour to get photographs that you'll actually want to put on the wall. Give me 15 minutes, somewhere good to walk, and I'll make sure we get some cracking images before you get back to the important business of enjoying your wedding.

As the day moved into the evening, the celebrations carried on.

And then Nathan and his large group of friends decided it was time to resurrect an old-school drinking game.

I’ll leave the details there.

Let’s just say that by this point in the evening, nobody was particularly interested in standing still for photographs. There was plenty of laughter, plenty of competition and a group of mates who clearly hadn’t lost their ability to have a good time.

And that’s exactly how a wedding should be.

Grace and Nathan’s day was about their family, their friends and spending time together. My job was simply to be there, photograph it as it happened and make sure that when they look back at their photographs years from now, they can remember not just what everything looked like, but what it felt like to be there.

From getting ready with their friends, to daffodils in the woodland glade, to a groom getting ready in a yurt and a late-night drinking game that probably shouldn't be documented too thoroughly — it was a brilliant day from start to finish.