Belva and Martyn’s Stradey Park Hotel Wedding

Location Shoot at Stradey Castle

I’ve been waiting for this wedding for a while, I’ve been itching to get the opportunity to shoot at Stradey Castle in Llanelli, and although I was a second wedding photographer for another wedding photographer, who’s also based in Llanelli, it’s just not the same unless it’s ‘my’ wedding!

What’s more amazing about this shoot, is that Belva’s home, I’ve actually been in the house before their parents! I used to live in the area, and play on the building site, yep… no health and safety and barricaded building sites back in the day – am I showing my age here?

Anyway, turning up for bridal preparations, and everyone was nice and calm, it was like a little reunion too, I seemed to know a lot of the other wedding suppliers that were present, the wedding hair stylist was baby Isabella’s gran, the wedding make-up artist was an old school friends sister! Isabella’s parent’s turned up later too!

After getting some candids of everyone getting ready, I took my time to set up the wedding dress, but this time, I did something different… I hung the dress up in the hallway, and shot all the way through the house from another bedroom, of course, being so far away, everyone else thought I was done with the wedding dress, and started to get their phones out, or just standing and admiring the dress… whilst I was on the other side of the house waiting and waiting for everyone to get out of my shot ha! I didn’t mind though, it’s nice to see other people enjoying photography!

I must say thanks to the father of the bride for letting me rearrange his bedroom to get a shot of the bride 😀 Once all was ready, it was off to Felinfoel Church, Llanelli. Another first for me, and I must add, it’s a fab church, and the vicar was amazing! We need more vicars like him, he was more than happy with me moving around for photos, but out of respect, I didn’t move too much, but managed to get a shot from the back of the church, where I’d normally need a second photographer to assist.

My balancing skills came into place for the group shot, I was up on the wall to gain some height, for the group shot. When all of the sudden the videographer had a quad copter hovering over us, I couldn’t look up too much, otherwise I would have had a fall!

So it was off to Stradey Castle afterwards, I could have spent so much time there, but as usual with weddings, time was limited. But hey, we still managed to get some amazing photos, and hopefully some different from other wedding photographers in the area.

Off to the Stradey Park Hotel afterwards, and photographed the wedding breakfast tables, with invitations and place cards and all other wedding stationery by Esquisite by Design, the room looked so elegant and beautiful.

Here’s a selection from Belva and Martyn’s wedding at the Stradey Castle and Stradey Park Hotel, don’t forget you can leave a message at the bottom of this wedding post to let the couple know what you think about their photos 🙂