South Wales wedding photographer – Swansea & Cardiff wedding & portrait photographer

The story of the day began at Fiona’s parent’s home in Swansea with Fiona’s preparations. Fiona’s bedroom at her parent’s house still has her name badge on the bedroom door, so this was the perfect place to start photographing the finer details of her gorgeous wedding dress, as it hung on the back of her old bedroom door next to her name.

Fiona returned from the salon with her friend Emma, and after the ladies had finished their make-up, Emma assisted Fiona with her dress. Once dressed we had a few family photos in the newly landscaped back garden of the house, before I left for the short trip to St. Catherine’s church in Gorseinon.

Once at the church Ade arrived with his best man and ushers and in-between the heavy April showers, we managed to capture some relaxed images of the guys together before the majority of the guests started to arrive, including page-boy Ben and flower-girl Sophie.

Fiona arrived at St. Catherine’s with her Dad, to be greeted by her brownie troop, before dodging another heavy shower and making her way inside the church for the wedding ceremony.

On leaving the church the brownies were assisted by other guests in creating a fantastic ‘confetti tunnel’ for Ade and Fiona, who left absolutely covered in petals!

On the way to the King Arthur Hotel Ade and Fiona had previously decided to stop off on the top of Cefyn Bryn, in order to visit ‘Arthur’s stone.’ This is something many of my couples from previous weddings at the King Arthur Hotel have planned to do over the last 7 years, but to date none had actually managed to get down to the stone, usually with the weather upsetting their best laid plans.

The wait (for me to photograph a couple at Arthur’s stone,) and the walk for Ade and Fiona was certainly worth it, as the increasingly volatile April weather, added to the dramatic rural Gower landscape with views over Oxwich Bay in one direction, and the Loughor estuary in the other direction, provided some amazing backdrops and contrasting weather conditions for the 20 minutes we were at Arthur’s stone.

The resulting images of Ade and Fiona were truly special, and those above are just a small example of some of the varied, creative and natural images we were able to create of them together. All made possible by Fiona and Ade who had made the effort to pre-plan the long walk down from the car park, (with Fiona bringing along a pair of ’weddingtons’ to change into in the wedding car,) and had scheduled enough time into their day for us to have 20 minutes at the stone to make the most of the dramatic Gower landscape.

Once we had returned to the cars in the Cefyn Bryn car park, it was a short roll down the hill to one of my favourite Swansea wedding venues, The King Arthur Hotel. On arrival we took advantage of the continuing dry spell and quickly set about capturing the carefully selected group photos that Ade and Fiona had requested, starting off with the popular group shot from the Kitchen rooftop.

Once these were swiftly and efficiently completed, Ade and Fiona had almost a full hour to relax and mingle with their family and friends, but decided to use a little of this time to also explore the beautiful grounds, gardens, lake and meadow of the King Arthur, with me. We only spent 15 minutes in the grounds together, but managed to create another varied collection of images of the two of them relaxing together.

After our tour of the grounds Ade and Fiona were announced into their wedding breakfast for a fantastic meal. The staff at the King Arthur worked their ‘wedding day magic’ ensuring that everyone enjoyed the fantastic food and beautiful surroundings of the Avalon banqueting hall. At the end of the main course Ade and Fiona cut their wedding ‘cheese’ cake, before enjoying their dessert which was followed by speeches.

If you know this wonderful couple please leave them a personal message below. If you’d like to be notified by email once all of the images from this special day are available to view on-line (after Ade and Fiona have returned from honeymoon and been into the studio for their champagne preview session,) please also leave them a message below. You can also share the images above with family and friends by clicking the Facebook ‘Like’ button below.

PS: It was also lovely to see two past couples of mine, Claire and Mark who got married in December 2010, and Faye and Andrew who got married in September 2009. I hope you guys enjoyed the day, this time as ‘guests.’