Welcome to the second annual Boggies, where I give fun and made-up awards to some of my favourite weddings from 2010.
What a year it’s been! In 2010, I’ve had 10 magazine covers for various publications, including Photo Pro (for which I am a regular columnist), You & Your Wedding, the SWPP 50th anniversary issue and the BIPP. We also won Entrepreneur of the Year with the Merton Business Awards and were highly commended for Best Business. And at the MPA awards, we were given the You & Your Wedding Bride’s Choice award – which definitely made me feel all warm and glowy inside. On TV, we’ve been filmed for a new series on Wedding TV (due out in April), been featured as a case study by Reuters, been interviewed by the BBC, taken part in a new series on ITV, and Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen even flounced in for a quick interview for House Gift. A photographer friend of mine said it’s been the Year of the Boggio and I can’t disagree.
So without further adieu, here’s a bit of fun for the end of what has been an amazing year. Here’s to an even better 2011!
Wedding with the least light

Most photographers think winter weddings are a real pain in the backside. And I’ll tell you why: no light! Obviously, if there is natural light, this makes things a lot easier. This wedding last March started at 5:00pm, which meant we had zero light. Zilch. Zippo.
Excellent! A challenge!
Running a photography studio as well as shooting weddings means that we’re used to creating light and thus we specialise in winter weddings. Armed with my off-camera flashes, video light, umbrellas and light stands, I set about having a bit of photographic fun.

The bride had told me beforehand that she was buying some angel wings on eBay as a prop. I love it when couples get involved with sourcing fun things for the “couple shoot” section of their wedding photography. This image, lit with two off-camera Speedlights, has a painterly, annunciation-style beauty to it.
They also had a Venetian mask theme on the day. In this dancing image, the groom is wearing a replica of the mask worn by Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut.

Best group shot

I loved this wedding, which I did with wedding planner Zoe Lingard. There are so many awards I could have given to this one, including “Best use of a pashmina” (all the men were wearing them like cravats).

For this group shot, I had come up with the idea of a “Kissing Booth” style image, with the bridal party lining up for kisses with the groom. And no, the best man isn’t vomiting; he’s spraying breath freshener into his mouth.
Jo and Luke got hitched in a Humanist ceremony at One Marylebone, one of my fave London venues and this was featured earlier this year in the 25th anniversary issue of You & Your Wedding.

Best confection
Candy rooms have become a big trend in weddings this year, but only Wes and Lucy actually sent off to America to have their faces printed onto M&Ms.

Between that and their magnificent Choccywoccydoodah cake, they really had this award in the bag.

Also, I think this is the only wedding I’ve ever shot where the bride and groom went clubbing after their wedding venue closed. Yes, the bride was still in her dress.

Most ribbon at a wedding
The DIY Bride of the Year has to be Caroline. From the invitations to every last detail, she personally handcrafted a candy-striped theme. I can only imagine how much time she spent with her glue gun and the number of paper cuts she must have received throughout the process.

One of her clever ideas was to have ribbons on each of the tables to mimic the stripe theme. And I suspect that if we put all the ribbon end-to-end, it would cover more ground than the London Tube network.

You’ll be able to see more from this wedding in Cosmo Bride and you can see some images from their pre-wedding shoot here.
Best happy coincidence at a wedding

One of the things I remember most vividly from Chris and Anthea’s wedding is cruising around The City in the 50’s Cadillac they had hired, on our way to the reception at Andaz. With the warm breeze blowing through the open windows, it was one of those moments where I was happy to be alive (Literally. I was in the front seat and there was no seat belt). On a detour through Hoxton, we drove near a huge wall of graffiti that read “SCARY”. Perfect! The C and the A were right next to each other! What were the chances? Sometimes, we wedding photographers have to say thanks to the god of happy coincidences.
Bride most likely to end up in the pool

If you’ve been to the Haymarket Hotel, you already know how gorgeous it is. One of its most original features is the underground poolroom, where many a swanky celebrity party has been held (you can see it in the beginning of “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” with Simon Pegg). Knowing David and Natasha and the venue they had chosen, I knew their wedding would be glamorous. And they didn’t disappoint. They even had an A-list celeb as a guest.

Fast forward to the end of the wedding. The party moved down to the poolroom. The fancy dress box and the lead singer of the band, who seemed to be channelling Prince, were causing much hilarity. The bride had changed out of her beautiful gown from Teokath and was wearing equally breath-taking evening dress for the party. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the wedding at the point where her father threw her into the pool, so I don’t have a picture of it. But I hear it was really funny.
Wedding most likely to cover one in goose poo

I remember when Sim & Paul booked me to shoot their wedding. It’s most notable for a few reasons: 1) they booked 2.5 years in advance, 2) they booked while they were sitting on a beach in Asia and 3) when they finally came into the studio to meet me, Paul is the only person to spill tea all over my sample albums. (No harm done, amazingly!). So I knew this would be a great wedding.

They held a Humanist ceremony at the Vale Fisheries, a location that meant a lot to the groom. It was a stunning location and they had really fun details, including “Yay!” signs instead of confetti for the guests. However, there was one unexpected side effect of having a wedding next to a fishing lake: the goose poo! It was everywhere and one had to keep on one’s toes to avoid it. Apparently on the day before the wedding, when the bride took her young pageboy to see the lake, he declared very seriously: “No, this just won’t do for a wedding.”

Actually, it was one of the most laid-back and fun weddings of the year for me. It’s also the wedding that I submitted for the You &Your Wedding Bride’s Choice award. You’ll be able to read more about it in the magazine in 2011.
Couple most likely to put me on a Trivial Pursuit card

I love coming up with ideas. When I meet brides and grooms at my studio and they start telling me about their fledgling wedding plans, we invariably spend half the time brainstorming ideas. That’s just the way I roll.

Chris and Mel were no different. We were talking about something fun they could do on their tables to act as an icebreaker for guests and I mentioned that, at my wedding, we did Trivial Pursuit-style cards, with questions about James, me, guests and a few other categories. They loved it! And they even went a step further making the cards a bit like a game of Cranium, with Play-doh on the table for sculpting words on the cards (like Pictionary with clay). On our table, we even had a “who can make the best dolphin” competition. But I digress.

I was so chuffed when I realised I was a question on the card. The wedding happened to be on my birthday and the question was “Who’s birthday is today?” So lots of guests kept coming up to me to wish me a happy birthday. That, combined with the excellent food at The Kensington Roof Gardens, made it a day to remember! (Also wins “Best exotic birds at wedding”.)
Best confetti

I love a good confetti shot. It’s always depressing when a venue says no to confetti; however, I like to think of it as a challenge to think of something else. Rob and Marilyn had a great idea: instead of confetti, they handed out model airplane kits to all the guests.
In addition, they hired loads of lawn games for the guests to play while we were doing photos.

Rob could also pick up the “Best Moustache” award.

Best facial expressions
The thing I love about Asian weddings is that you will never go to two that are exactly the same. Each one has a unique mix of events, depending on religion and family tradition.


At this wedding at Blenheim Palace, I loved the all the games that the bride and groom had to play during the ceremony, including “Pass the baby”, “Eat this! It’s yummy!” and “Find your wedding ring in the bowl of pink stuff” (please note these are my names, not theirs ;o)


The last one got particularly heated, with the groom scoring 2 out of 3, much to the bride’s chagrin. But competitiveness aside, all was well in the end, as Ketan and Avi started their wedded life staring off into the sunset of a brilliant day.

Best wigs
I’ve never seen a group of men get so excited by wigs.

At Henry and Melissa’s wedding at The Walled Garden, the groom had gone out and purchased a whole assortment of wigs for his group of merry men. Those wigs continued to crop up throughout the rest of the day, with the big Elvis quiff being the popular choice. And here’s one of the bride, because she looked really pretty, too, and not a wig in sight.

Most creative pre-wedding shoot
I love doing pre-wedding shoots, especially when the couple wants to do something a bit different. This year, most creative definitely has to go to Emma and Michael, who actually phoned up Virgin to see if we could shoot in their rig (which has been used in all sorts of films, like James Bond).


With Michael living in New York and Emma in London, Virgin Atlantic acted as their “love bus”, shuttling them back and forth across the ocean. I brought in an assortment of studio lighting and even brought the red curtains to hang between first class and economy.


Emma played the role of Saucy Stewardess to perfection while Michael played the Passionate Passenger (perhaps I read too many romance novels as a teenager).
I also have to mention this wonderful shoot with Jo and Luke who won Best Group Shot above. It was vintage; it was fun.



Groom most likely to lose his ring in a snowball fight at the wedding
Last, but certainly not least, this is the wedding I shot most recently in Essex in the middle of the big pre-Christmas snow dump. The sudden onslaught of snow meant not only that none of the evening guests could make it, but also that members of the band were struggling to arrive. As we all waited for the drummer, an impromptu snowball fight started, with even the bride wading in. And yes, as the name of the award implies, the groom’s shiny new wedding ring came flying off his finger along with the snowball. And it was never found, but at least I have a lovely picture of it.

This was an amazing wedding that you will no doubt be seeing in a magazine this year; the details were superb. However, as the bride and groom are still on honeymoon and I have a strict rule about the bride and groom being the first to see their images, I can’t share any more here. However, I can show you this image from their pre-wedding shoot. They had a travel theme at the wedding and wanted to extend this into their engagement shoot. So they dressed up like tourists. My friend Doug from New York happened to be visiting at the time, so I decided to use him in one of the shots as a flasher. He was simply thrilled when I forced him into my raincoat and pulled down his trousers in the middle of Southbank. I, quite literally, was laughing so hard that I wet my pants.

And with that, I think it’s time to draw the 2010 Boggies to a close, especially as it’s starting to read more like War and Peace. I’m sure you have preparations to make for a swanky New Year’s Eve celebration, so please don’t let me keep you any further. Here’s to a wonderful 2011!