Cheltenham Wedding Photography by October James Photography
We travelled to Cheltenham the day before Michelle and Ash's Friday wedding at the picturesque Manor By The Lake.
The venue is about 3 hours away for us so we stayed in the stunning Bradley Hotel on Thursday night to make sure we were fully rested and had no worries about traffic jams on the way to the wedding. Arriving a day early also gave us plenty of time to scope out the venue and plan the photos we wanted to take. Both the house and the gardens offer a wealth of photographic possibilities.
We checked into our hotel at around 4pm and were greeted with a G&T and shown to our beautiful room. This hotel in set within a grand terrance in central Cheltenham. We popped to The Ivy for dinner but, being professional, limited ourselves to just two cocktails!lol
Michelle and Ash both got ready at the venue - the bride in one of the luxurious bedrooms and the groom in the very cool Rock Bar.
The Ceremony Room within the manor is very impressive, Large windows overlook the garden and a magnificent fireplace adds to the feeling of grandeur.
We always aim to make our portrait sessions as fun as possible to achieve "genuine" photos. We don't like forcing our couples into awkward poses and prefer to capture more natural looking images. The Manor has stunning grounds which are lit at night so with Michelle and Ash we had two portrait sessions - one in sunlight and one after dark. We spent time setting up off-camera-flash lighting at night before calling the newlyweds back out.
We stayed around to capture the first dance and partying before heading back home.
We travel up and down the country with our photography and love meeting all the people and seeing all the different venues this brings.