Charlotte and Chris - Birmingham Post Wedding Shoot

Mar 5, 2016

I photographed Charlotte and Chris' wedding back in October 2014 at Warwick House in Southam. It was beautiful and simplistic and the venue was perfect. Although you wouldnt have put Charlotte down as a white-wedding-dress-kinda-girl, this is exacly what she opted for at the time.

Now, a couple of yours on, her undercut hair style has re-appeared and she is very much embracing a style that she feels very comfortable in - back to her punk, alternative roots. With all of this in mind, Charlotte was keen to work on a shoot that signified a goodbye to the dress. When we initially discussed this shoot - Chris suggested a paintballing session. Apart from being extremely painful, I advised against this because I felt we could do something that felt more like 'them'.

Charlotte and Chris' life and marriage has been made whole with the addition of three cats and one dog - Roxy. Although I knew we would'nt get the cats out for a shoot, I had more hope with Roxy, so suggested we went to the muddiest place I could think of - the fordrough in Wythall, Birmingham.

The shoot started off relatively tame - I wanted to make sure that we had some lovely couples portraits under the belt before we hit the mud and the stream.

Charlotte and Chris were totally relaxed infront of the camera - maybe their experince from their wedding day made it all just so easy - once we got going, there was no holds barred and we had so much fun.

The result is a set of images that seem to skirt between fantasy and realism depending on your take. I was keen to photograph in a way that wasnt an aggressive goodbye to the dress - which I think the paintballing would have been, but something that was more organic and akin to their lifestyle. (who takes their dog for a walk in their wedding dress of course?).

We had some starange looks from dog walkers whilst we were working - one man said 'the things you see when you're out dog walking, they'll never believe me when I tell them'

Thanks Charlotte and Chris' for being so up for the shoot, I'm not sure who enjoyed themselves the most x