Here’s my photographic take on Thea & Tom’s truly stunning wedding at St Thomas of Canterbury in Sevenoaks with a reception at the beautiful Chiddingstone Castle back in the summer. Chiddingstone castle is a true favourite of mine – a very elegant venue with lots of different areas for photographs and the bridge is to-die-for, so you’re always guaranteed some great wedding photos at this amazing wedding venue!
As usual, you can watch a full slide show of their images below, or read about it with a smaller snapshot of pictures.
Suppliers:
Floral decoration: Florist in the Forest
Venue: Chiddingstone Castle
Table & Chair hire: Rent Event
Catering: Urban Pantry
Bridal Prep
The wedding morning dawned and we were greeted with beautiful sunshine, but rather high winds forecast for the day (read gale force at times) so I was resigned to a bit of ducking and diving with the weather (as I had been with the same venue combo for Caroline & Jacob’s wedding coming up on the blog soon). In what was a record drive to bride prep, Thea, the bridesmaids and her parents were getting ready in a chic AirBnB apartment just round the corner from where i live – the lights were against me so it took me 2 minutes to get there, rather than 1!
As usual I set about documenting the morning, using the amazing light through the large bay windows plus making use of the cool features for detail shots – such a great location (and it allowed us to watch trees bending precariously!!)
Once the hair and makeup had been done, Thea put on her dress for the grand unveiling, before opening a lovely card and present from Tom.
I then hot-footed it from Tunbridge Wells to Sevenoaks to the church, to join Neil who was second shooting with me.
The Wedding Ceremony
I joined Neil at St Thomas ( a very popular church combination with Chiddingstone Castle) to photograph guests and Tom as he waited nervously for the bride’s arrival. As always, a lovely service with Father David – including a few funny moments from Thea!
After the service the guest lined up for possibly the longest and most enthusiastic confetti line I’ve ever seen – the high winds ensured confetti was EVERYWHERE, which made for some great memorable wedding photographs.
The newlyweds then headed off to Chiddingstone Castle in their amazing fleet of VW wedding car/campervan for their reception.
Reception & Wedding Breakfast
Whilst the guests made their way to The Orangery at Chiddingstone for the drinks reception, we stopped off in front of the stunning Castle for some photos with the cars, followed by a quick walk down to the bridge for some couples pictures – amazing light as usual and very luckily the trees gave us some protection from the wind (I had nightmares of Thea’s stunning bespoke veil – complete with names and dates embroidered on to it – flying off into the lake!!!).
Thea and Tom were then driven round to make their grand entrance directly to the Orangery and to greet their guests.
Once the drinks reception had finished and the group shots dispatched (the Orangery provides fantastic cover from the elements and is so light an airy, group shots looked fantastic), the guests made their way to the stunning Marquee – the U shaped set up, complete with so many amazing touches, really looked fantastic!
While the guests were making their way over, Thea, Tom and I finished up with a few final couples shots in the long grass – the wind certainly provided some movement to the shots, that’s for sure!
The amazing sharing platter food from The Urban Pantry just looked so delicious and went down well, before we were on to the speeches!
Evening Reception
Soon it was time to make our way back over to the Castle itself, for tea and coffee and the cake cutting, before the first dance in the main hall kicked off the party, with some epic dancing along the way!
Thea and Tom had arranged a really cool mobile drinks van to park up just outside the main entrance to Chiddingstone so there were great photo opportunities inside and out – dancing, and those enjoying the now calm beautiful night outside the castle!
Congratulations again to Thea and Tom on such a stunning wedding day!
If you’re having a wedding at Chiddingstone Castle and want to discuss your wedding photography, do please Contact me – I’d love to hear your plans and see how I can be part of your day at one of my favourite wedding venues in Kent!
Copyright David Burke Photography 2019