Weddings in North Carolina

Things have been quiet on here, but they have not been quiet, not by any stretch.

I’ve just got back from a magical week in the US, where an old friend was getting married on a beach in the mountains of North Carolina.

I love shooting weddings, but shooting a wedding for friends makes it personal. Mat has married a yank and has become one of them (string vest and all) and I couldn’t wait to shoot this. It was outside, a first for me and the fact that the way we Brits do weddings is slightly different to the way they do them over there kept me on my toes with a lot of running around!

They like their formal shots. Lots of them. Way more than we seem to. I had the group lists to shoot, though I didn’t realise that the bride has a list of formal shots with her family once she is ready, the groom has his list of formals with his family when he is getting ready AND all of those shots again after the ceremony with both of them. Crazy! Fun, but crazy! The Americans also have a tradition of leaving the reception to a tunnel of sparklers. I knew this from a wedding I went to in South Carolina a couple of years ago but totally forgot. When I got called to do that there was definitely a moment of panic while I figured out how the heck that was going to work. I did my best…

It’s the first wedding I have shot in a long while without an assistant and it made me realise how much I have come to rely on a second pair of hands during the course of a wedding. Not even so much for their photographs, but knowing that you have a safety net which allows me to try stuff with flash and lights that could backfire and go wrong. When you shoot on your own, you can’t afford mistakes and to an extent have to play things safe. It also made me think about how safe is usually the best way anyway.

I was lucky to have the most beautiful backdrop of the North Carolina mountains, and Noura looked amazing while Mat…well, he was Mat - but both look really, really good in photographs and I think I took some of the best photographs I have taken in a long, long time.

In my four days at Brown Mountain Beach Resort I made a whole new lot of friends, drank….a lot, and didn’t go to bed until at least three am courtesy of the hot tubs in each cabin.

Magical!

full set at http://www.stuarthogbenphotography.co.uk/mat_noura#0