#langlandswedding2017

Saturday 11th February 2017. South Coast of England, Eastbourne. Cooden Beach Hotel, situated right on the top of the beach. Sleety snow and rain. Just above freezing and a wind that could clean your teeth. I'm here to photograph the wedding of Jessica and David. There's a proud Scottish heritage from Jessica's side of the family. I meet Jim Jessica's father who is a first generation Scot, at their home address where the bride and her bridesmaids are getting made up. Jim tells me that the family surname although Scottish probably originated from the French middle-ages. So why does this matter? Well David the groom is taking Jessica's surname, breaking from the traditional way of doing things where Jessica would normally take his name. So they become Mr & Mrs Langlands once the wedding is completed. After watching and photographing the Ladies getting ready I moved off to the hotel to photograph there and await the start of the big day.

At any wedding there are always one or two moments that get captured on camera that need no real words for the viewer to understand what's going on and to read the expressions of the people in the

jessica and jim langlands cooden beach hotel

pictures. Take this one for instance. Here they are, the proud father escorting his daughter down the aisle. The bride all smiles as she sees her future husband waiting. In the next picture the Officiant asks, 'who gives this woman to this man'? and of course Jim proudly kisses his daughter and says 'I do'.

And there the journey begins. The ceremony takes place and the exchange of rings created great laughter when the groom got his left and right mixed up. Eventually it was sorted.

and he got the right hand and finger!

And then once he'd got his woman or she'd got her man they went off for some formal photographs.

The poor groom seemed to take a lot of stick from both his 'best men' about his stature and this was again captured in one of those photos.

However the Groom didn't do badly despite the mickey taking, when the bridesmaids treated him to some love.

While all this was going on the children just wanted to join in.

At every wedding young children are ever present. With boundless energy they are always the first on the dancefloor and often the last. In between they tend to amuse themselves!

Eventually the theme of 'mock the Groom' resurfaced when the Best Men gave their speech and did their best to build him up and knock him down again!

However the Best Men and everyone else were ultimately surprised when it came to the couples First Dance. Strictly Comes Dancing had arrived at Cooden Beach hotel and the new Mr & Mrs Langlands did an amazing 'Fred and Ginger' throughout the entire dance.

Naturally once they had finished most of the adults ran for the bar, stunned at what they'd just witnessed. With no hope of beating that routine it was once again left to the children to upstage the grown ups.