We are delighted to announce that one of our couples has again had their special day chosen to be featured as a ‘Real Wedding’ article in the September/October edition of ‘Your South Wales Wedding Magazine.’

This is the only geocentric commercially available wedding magazine covering the whole of East, South, West and Mid Wales and is available from all good newsagents and supermarkets throughout the country priced at £2.95.

Our featured wedding this time is from Cath and Dean who got married in June this year. (Click here to see images from their special day.)

They had their wedding in Swansea and Gower, with their reception at the stunning King Arthur Hotel in Reynoldston, with photos alone taken at the Oxwhich Castle ruins, just 10 mins drive away from this popular Gower and South Wales wedding venue.

We are delighted with the article and although have no control over which images are selected to illustrate the story, feel that they have selected some great storytelling wedding photos which compliment the story of this special day perfectly.

If you’d like to see the full four page Real wedding article, please click here. If you’d like to see our ever growing collection of published ‘Real Weddings’ then you can select them from this page.

If you were at this wedding, or if you know Cath and Dean, please leave them a comment below.

Finally, a big thank you once again, must go to Cath and Dean for inviting me to capture the story of their day back in June, and also for agreeing to have their very special story featured in a national wedding magazine.

Thanks guys, I hope you enjoy the memento when your copy arrives in the post. It’s going to look great sat next to your album in years to come!

Nic

After years of resisting social networking sites (for fears of Nic spending even more time in front of the computer than he currently does,) we have been receiving such a high volume of ‘friend requests’ from past and present clients, that we have decided to create a Nic Cleave Photography Facebook page.

Click here if you’d like to visit us on Facebook and please leave a message or send us a friend request so we can stay in touch with you.

Although we’ll be posting recent news and a few images from recent weddings and location-based portrait sessions Nic has photographed, we will still be using this blog as the main area for previewing Nic’s most recent work, news, and for displaying the kind comments he receives from his couples and families.

We are looking forward to hearing from all of you soon and especially to catching up with a few former clients that we haven’t heard from for a year or two.

Diana.

It was my pleasure to photograph the wedding of Philip and Claire last Saturday at the beautiful New House Country Hotel, Thornhill overlooking Cardiff and the bay.

After capturing the story of Claire’s preparations at her parent’s home in the morning, we moved on to the beautiful St. Catwgs church in the quiet picturesque village of Pentyrch. After the service we made the short trip to a private location for a stunning backdrop to Philip and Claire’s ’bride and groom’ photos.

This private school was the same location that featured last month in Philip and Claire’s location-based engagement session, and the forecast heavy rain showers stayed away leaving a moody sky that only added atmosphere to this fantastic location.

Photographer’s in Wales are spoilt for choice when it comes to locations for wedding day photography, but it’s always refreshing to be able to capture special images of a couple on their big day, somewhere ‘different’. This ensures that really unique images will be available to chose from when it comes time to select photos for the album!

After a stroll through the grounds of the school, mixing natural reportage opportunities with some more posed shots, we headed back to the cars for the short trip to The New House Country Hotel in Thornhill.

This stunning Cardiff wedding venue is set high up on a hillside with panoramic views over Cardiff city and Cardiff bay. With the rain holding off until all the outside photography was finished, the stormy sky once again added some drama to the small but important selection of group photos that we made in 20-30 mins, before heading inside for cover!

After a fantastic wedding breakfast, the cake was cut followed by the speeches to finish off a the formalities of a fantastic day for a great couple. I hope you have enjoyed the sneaky peak images above and would like to invite family and friends to leave Philip and Claire a personal message below.

All of the stunning images from this special day are now available to view as a slide-show accessed from this page of our website.

As always my thanks must go to Philip and Claire for inviting me to capture the story of their big day. It was my pleasure to photograph you both with your family and friends. Have a great honeymoon guys. Safe travelling and I hope there’s no volcano disruption to your journey home.

Nic

It was my pleasure to photograph the wedding of Neil and Lesley last Friday at the beautiful King Arthur Hotel on Gower near Swansea.

After capturing some preparation photos of Lesley with her daughter and three other bridesmaids, it was over to the meet Neil and the guys in the cottage to see the finishing touches to the suits.

After a civil ceremony in the main room at the King Arthur, reception drinks were served and everyone enjoyed the warm spring sunshine. Once watered we spent 20-25 minutes capturing a few special group shots of family and friends, and then I walked with Neil and Lesley in the beautiful grounds for 30 minutes to capture a lovely set of bride and groom photos.

After more drinks in the sunshine it was time to head inside for the wedding breakfast, cake cutting and speeches, which brought my involvement in the day to a close.

If you were at this wedding I hope you have enjoyed the sneaky peak images above and would like to invite you to leave Neil and Lesley a personal message below. For those friends and family members who would like to see all of the images from this special day, please click here to access the slide-shows which are now ready to view!

Finally a big thank you to Neil and Lesley for inviting me to your day. I hope you enjoy the photos and have a great time in Barcelona on honeymoon. Safe travelling guys.

Nic

It was my pleasure to photograph Claire and Philip’s location-based portrait engagement session on Sunday, at a secret location near Cardiff in South Wales.

The reason for the secrecy is that the beautiful house and gardens which feature as the stunning backdrop for this e-session are privately owned and used as a school. Claire and Philip of course had been granted special permission to use the location for both their location-based engagement session, and for their bride and groom wedding photos, when they get married next month.

The house, which has been used as a secret filming location by many tv and film companies provided a fantastic backdrop to the session, providing complete beauty and peace and quiet, which allowed Claire and Philip to relax together as they were photographed.

After a quick tour of the grounds together, it was back to the car to pick up the cameras and equipment, and then off for a photographic tour of the location.

Almost 50% of our couples now include a location-based engagement portrait session in their wedding photography package, as it allows them to have a ‘dry run’ of the photography part of their big day. It allows each couple to receive lots of useful helps and tips which really do ensure that they look their best in the photos, not only at their e-session but perhaps more importantly on their big day.

An engagement session also helps couples to relax while being photographed by a professional photographer, again something which will certainly show on the later wedding images, and of course provides an opportunity for a couple to plan with their photographer where and how the photos will be taken on the wedding day, all invaluable preparation to ensure everything runs smoothly on the big day itself. To find out more about our popular location-based engagement portrait session, please click here.

We hope you have enjoyed the photos above from Claire and Philip’s engagement session, and if you know them would like to invite you to leave them a personal message below. If you know them and would like to see the complete set of images from this session, please click here to access the slide-shows.

My thanks must go to Claire and Philip who were great to photograph. Guys, I hope you enjoy viewing the photos as much as I did making them with you. I’m looking forward to photographing you again with your families and friends next month, as you celebrate your wedding day at the beautiful New House Hotel in Cardiff. Good luck with the last minute planning!

Nic

If you’d like to see the kinds of images contained in this new storybook album, please click here to read James and Lee’s blog entry from last September. This album of course replaces one of our favourites in recent years, the wedding of Ellie and Jez from Cardiff. (click here to see their album or click here to see their wedding published as a ‘Real Wedding’ feature in a leading wedding magazine.) Thank you to both couples for allowing us to show your personal images to our prospective couples. We are looking forward to sharing this new story of James and Lee’s day with the many couples we’ll be meeting over the next 12 months.

If you’d like to see a gallery full of images of our full range of storybook albums, parent albums and mini albums etc, please click here.

Remember our storybook albums are NOT the same as you’ll find from other photographers. We are very proud of this fact and it’s one of the many reasons our couples choose us. The main ones are as follow:

1) We use probably the finest album producer in the world to print and bind our storybook albums. No paper thin pages like the coffee table books some photographers supply and claim to be ‘storybook albums.’ We supply only full-sized albums, so there are no ‘hidden costs’ in supplying cut-down versions of the albums initially with our packages, hoping that you’ll want a bigger and more expensive album later!

2) Each album is designed carefully by Nic using the unique images from your day, from scratch. Nic does not use album design software that relies on templates which make all albums look the same. Each album produced is a unique and highly personal reflection of the story of your day and is designed by him from scratch, every time.

3) Nic does not simply send off a disc of 100 images from your wedding to an album company that employs third-rate graphic designers and illustrators to design his albums for him. Nic was the photographer on the day who witnessed your story unfolding before his camera, so is the best person to re-tell the story of your day through the design of your unique storybook album.

4) Nic does not rely on date sensitive design trends to create a wow factor or high impact for low quality images. Instead he prefers to let the high quality of your wedding photographs do the wowing and impacting themselves. This ensures his albums are as ‘future proof’ as possible.

To read more on why Nic’s range of storybook albums is so popular please click here.

Nic.

Let us be the first to welcome in the new year and new decade with our warmest congratulations to all of those couples who got engaged over the Xmas and New Year period.

A popoular time of the year to ‘pop the question’, we are always delighted to meet the couples in the first few weeks of January who have recently become engaged. If this applies to you, then don’t leave booking your photographer any later. As soon as you have confirmed your wedding date with your venues, the next thing to do is to make the important choice of selecting your preferred photographer.

We have a lot of advice on the ‘Frequently Asked Questions‘ page of our website to cover this important decision making area of planning your big day. You may also find this (and many other questions on photography,) posed by brides in the many ‘Q&A‘ articles that Nic has written for ‘Your South Wales Wedding’ magazine useful. Click here to see previous editions of this magazine where Nic writes as the ‘Photography Expert.’

If you would simply like to know if Nic is still available on your wedding date, then click here to visit the ‘Date Check’ page of our website. If you’d like to see our new range of 2010 packages with pricing details, then please click here. If you have any questions about your wedding photography that are not covered by our comprehensive website, then please call us at the studio, or send us a quick email. Contact details are here.

Finally, we’d like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2010. We are looking forward to another year meeting and photographing new people, and to working with all of our wedding couples and families to create the perfect emotional record of the important events and mile stones in your lives.

Best wishes,

Diana

We have recently been receiving an unprecedented number of enquiries for 2010 wedding dates. This should be a good thing right? Well actually it not been too great. We met many disappointed couples at the recent Liberty Stadium wedding Show, and are now speaking to many disappointed brides on the phone.  The main reason for this is that there seems to be a growing trend in the UK for couples to book their wedding photographer with less than 12 months to go before their big day. As a result Nic has been booked for almost 60% of our recent enquiries!

This may be because of inaccurate advice in wedding magazines and on wedding forums. Please don’t believe all the ‘doom and gloom’ that the media is trying to convince us is true. Yes there are less weddings across the UK at the moment because people are concerned about the economy etc, but people are still getting married. As a business heavily involved with the wedding industry in Wales, we seem to have fared reasonably well as we have managed to maintain the strict number of weddings that Nic photographs each year (a maximum of just 35), throughout the last 24 months of uncertain economic conditions. This could be because many of the couples we have worked with in this period have booked Nic two years in advance of their day.

If the photography part of your day is not important to you (and it is to most of the couples who choose Nic as their photographer,) you may easily be able to find a photographer who may be free six-twelve months before your date, BUT if the photography IS important to you, and if you want your FIRST choice of photographer to capture your once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-repeated special day, please please please book that photographer as soon as you have confirmed your date and venue booking, (even if it’s not Nic!)

Now many couples may well be thinking that this advice is simply designed to encourage them to book their photographer earlier than they need to. Our own statistics show us that over 80% of our couples book Nic as their first choice photographer in the 24 to 18 months period before their big day.

In much the same way as the ‘nicer’ wedding venues across Wales are fully booked 2-3 years in advance for the most popular summer and winter dates, the first choice photographers are often booked early as well. As we only photograph one wedding per day, once we are booked, that date is no-longer available, so please please please don’t leave it too late.  Disappointment definitely should not be part of your wedding planning process, and saying to a couple on the phone that… “we are already booked” is one of the parts of our job that we like the least.

If you’d like to check Nic’s availability for your date, please click here. Our booking fee is a minimum of £300 to secure your date. Once this has been received, your date is reserved and your selected package price is fixed. This means that you are protected from future (inevitable) price increases, no matter how far in advance you book your date with us. Our current price list contains our 2008 prices, (as we didn’t increase them in January 2009,) so if you book your 2010/11/12 wedding before the end of 2009, you will receive our 2008 price for your 2010/11/12 wedding photography package!

Good luck to those early-birds amongst you!

Diana

It was my pleasure to photograph the winter wedding of Ashlee and Sulaiman on Saturday at the beautiful Craig-y-nos Castle on the edge of the Brecon Beacons national park. This was our first winter wedding of the 09/10 season and a great way to start off this busy time of the year.

The worst storms of the year so far did not deter Ashlee and Sulaiman and their family and friends from enjoying the events of the day. After some relaxed ‘preparation’ photos, we moved into the (haunted,) theatre for the ceremony, followed by a champagne reception and a few family/group photos, again in the main theatre to protect everyone from the howling wind and rain.

After the reception dinner we used one of the small lounges with beautiful atmospheric candle lighting and green leather sofas for some ‘intimate’ shots of Ashlee and Sulaiman alone. We finished off the photography part of their day with a few more photos in their suite and ended the day with a night shot of the outside of the venue (between torrential showers.)

If you were at this wedding we hope you have enjoyed the small selection of images above and would like to invite you to leave Ashlee and Sulaiman a personal message below. All of the stunning images from this special day are also available to view from Ashlee and Sulaiman’s own password-protected page of our website here.

Thank you for inviting me to play a small part in your big day guys. I hope you love the photos.

Nic

Firstly we can post bigger images from your wedding or location-based portrait session. Secondly it’s now much easier for readers to leave us comments and thirdly we have a great new ‘Search’ facility which allows readers to search the entire blog using keywords they select. So if you’re planning a wedding at the King Arthur Hotel on Gower for example, type ‘King Arthur Hotel’ into the search box and wait for the results. You can then click on the post headings to visit archived posts and see Nic’s previous work from the venue etc.

We hope you like the new look and will enjoy the new functionality it provides.

Nic