Jade & Tom | Cheshire
It has taken me an incredibly long time to write this because I honestly donât feel that I can put into words just how grateful we are for the photos Paul provided from our wedding.
We booked Paul after attending the evening of a friends wedding, novel a photographer still there in the evening! We honestly thought Paul must have been a family friend he was there all night he had rapport and familiarity with all of the guests... then a week or so later we saw the photos ... Wow the most natural, happy photos Iâd ever seen - I made a beeline for my friends âWho is this family friend heâs amazing?!?â, âHeâs notâ they replied, I couldnât believe it, we genuinely thought he wasnât an official photographer he blends in so well and everyone was so ânormalâ around him, certainly not how we had seen other photographers at weddings! Not yet engaged but 6 long years into my relationship his details were stored in the Rolodex and I silently stalked Paulâs Instagram and Facebook for months until finally I was engaged.
I have to say a few years ago I would have gone for the traditional stand for hours on end to get the countless shots your mum and nan want, but I couldnât bat away the irrational anger I had whenever I saw a couple peeking out from behind a tree, the heart shaped group shots as photographers hung out of an upstairs room.
We booked Paul (and yes your Mum and Nan will probably not understand at first âso there wonât be any pictures with you and Daniel your cousin you havenât seen for 8 years â?) but my god it was the best decision we made throughout our whole wedding - your day goes by in such a whirlwind and I can honestly say Paulâs photos make me feel the exact way I felt on the day, they paint a picture of the emotions we felt and we all look so happy in them!
Paul you made both Tom and I feel so relaxed you understood that it was so important for us to enjoy the day with our friends and family (if youâre reading this you probably already know weddings cost a small fortune please if I ever give any advice on a wedding enjoy it, be present). I can honestly say I have no regrets that we donât have countless group shots of forced smiles, Paul photographed our wedding just as it was, we got to spend our precious time with each other and the people we love, and thatâs the beauty of what he does - rather than us looking stiff and awkward we have natural pictures of us laughing and smiling with our loved ones - all without interruption ....
Our wedding photos are the most perfect representation of not just our day, but of me and my husband and our wonderful friends and family. Paul you are a wizard and anyone who chooses to have you as their photographer will have the most wonderful, relaxed day with a set of timeless photographs of them looking happier, more relaxed and more in love than any posed photographer could ever create, and let me be clear here, I am talking ALL of the pictures, not just a few, there isnât a single picture in our wedding gallery that doesnât mean something to us, no fillers, no pictures to make the numbers up - Paul gives you a gallery full of fantastic ones!
If youâre thinking of booking Paul but youâre worried youâll miss an important family member, moment or loving look, he wonât miss a thing I can promise you that! As for the Mums and Nans of your world, once they see the photos theyâll be completely won over - All of our sceptical family agreed that he was the best booking we made at our wedding (so much so, heâs booked for the next family wedding)
Lots of Love
The Whytes x
Helen & Tristan | Cambridge
When it came to choosing the photographer, I am afraid I wasnât very imaginative. I had a google, looked at a few sites and portfolios, looked at a few prices... had a stiff drink, and plucked up the courage to look again!
I found a lady not to far away from me and met her at the venue - she seemed nice enough, her photoâs were the usual mix of the shoes, the dress, the venue, a few line ups and some loving gazes thrown into the mix - everything I understood a wedding portfolio should be. ÂŁ700 just about seemed reasonable - provided she did an engagement shoot within that price - I signed on the dotted line and I paid my deposit... how then does Paul come in you might ask?!
When you get married, particularly if you are a bit of a DIYer... it is really hard (well I found it hard!) to stop yourself joining all these Facebook groups, gathering ideas, building Pinterest boards - and Paul happened to be in one of those groups. I wasnât any part of the conversation going on but I remember thinking, what he said sounded interesting - that you could go the whole day without having to force your guests to wait endlessly around while great aunt Pat finds her hat to wear for the line up and cousin Susan wonders off after her errant child while she is meant to be smiling graciously for the camera. Iâd actually been the maid of honour at a wedding the year before and been in charge of this aspect of the day - it is bloody hard work getting people to stay where they are put - I genuinely think adults are worse than children... and as a primary school teacher of 5 years, I am well placed to know...
Blown away by the portfolio on his website, I messaged Paul. The way he talked about not accepting every couple and being very busy - I think I must have seen it as a challenge! We sent a few messages back and forth. He was making me laugh, I think I was winning him over, I swooned over the pictures on his website...my husband to be asked me if I was sure I was marrying the right man as I seemed to like this photographer an awful lot?! But eventually I pinned him down and he promised to make the trek from Manchester to Cambridge.
Just a tiny problem...I had already booked the photographer! I had shown her the venue, introduced her to my parents...!!!! I had had a tricky enough time persuading my husband that this was a good idea (it was, after all, a wee bit more money!), my parents are even more difficult to please (and for financial reasons it was important to please them!!). Bless my mother, she was not impressed at all. She decided she didnât like Paulâs pictures, they werenât the usual wedding pictures, and if she didnât get a picture of us all together properly on the day, she was going to be very cross...! My father absolutely could not get his head around it at all...the thought of no line-ups and traditional photos were pretty much inconceivable. I had to do some serious persuasion and absolutely promise that there would be pictures of us together but just not in the usual boring way, and in fact, in the end, I had to do just a tiny bit of foot stamping...just a tiny tiny little bit! - I would like to think that that is not my usual modus operandi but desperate times and all that!
I did feel guilty about cancelling the other photographer and suffice to say, I never saw that deposit again and really, rightly so.
The wedding day approached - the usual crap that goes with these things (that you think will never happen to you) inevitably does. Extra people want to come, other people donât want to come, the heating company cancel. None of those issues involved Paul, from start to finish, everything was straight forward. He sent me a questionnaire to fill in, asking about any really important people we definitely wanted pictures of, and a few other minor details - but it was only 1 page, not 20 - hurrah! He sent me a contract - all very straightforward, no surprises. He offered me the option to pay some money from his invoice towards a charitable cause he was supporting at the time - no additional cost to me, only from himself - a no brainier for me!
And then the day arrived. Now I am not really a people person, I am a total introvert. I can do extrovert - after those years of teaching, you learn how to do it pretty well - but I find it tiring and I knew how much energy I would have to put into the rest of the day, I didnât want to use that all up in the morning... From the moment he arrived, bearing a bottle of champagne, Paul took up none of my energy - he was just there, discreetly capturing me cuddling my springer spaniel so I could avoid talking to people and get through the morning. He won over my father (not an easy thing to do on one of the most stressful days of his life - my father is not a people person either), he had my mother laughing, he listened to my sisters sociopolitical discussion (read rant), and didnât bat an eyelid at some of the more eccentric goings on in my family household (I wonât bore you here...!). And all the time he was doing this he was working. I still donât actually know how he does it, some sort of sorcery? Magical trickery? Somehow he managed to be âon itâ, working, capturing every moment, every second of the day, and at the same time, managed to fit in with all of the guests and become one of them. Some of them genuinely thought he was one of them! He photographed moments I had no idea had happened and caught us on camera when I had no idea he was there. The vicar tried to set up the âsigning of the registerâ shot, not realising the photo had already been taken. The guests asked when the lineups were going to be, not realising that they were already in them. Trying to persuade them that they wouldnât have to wait around for the traditional shots was also rather difficult!
When you are a bride, it does all go by in a bit of a rush. Because of our barn location, we had an 11pm ending to our wedding, but had it been 3am or 4am, I have no doubt that Paul would still have been there right until the end - making sure that he didnât miss a thing and we have the photograph to prove it - genuinely the last man standing.
Prepared to wait an age and a day for the pictures to come through (that is traditional after all!) I put them out of my head. Receiving a wonderful preview of the pictures in a video clip about 2 weeks later was the last thing I expected! Iâd never heard the song he chose to set it to, but it has now become one of our favourites as it has such happy memories attached to it. The pictures, unbelievably, were ready about a week after that and there were some serious happy tears all around, new husband, parents, great aunts...everyone needed a hanky. Any of my families original fears, completely allayed and forgotten. I made a photo book online (and one for each set of our lovely generous parents!), not having to worry about copyright or whether I had to ask permission to actually print the pictures. And each and every time I look back at that book - the sniffing starts again - I honestly never could have imagined how much I would love those photos, how much they would show the personalities of the people, the story and the very essence of the day and just how much they would mean to me."
Grace & Toby | Scotland
Booking Paul was hands down the best decision we made for our wedding! We spent ages finding the perfect photographer because weâre both extremely picky, we knew what we wanted but were really struggling to find a casual style of photography where the people in the pictures actually looked relaxed and genuinely happy. Lots of photographers seemed to talk about moments and fun and all the stuff we wanted but the pictures we saw didnât pull at our heart strings or keep our interest. We went to what felt like a million wedding fairs, spoke to photographers who all promised a relaxed approach and unique pictures full of memories and moments but on browsing the carefully laid out albums the pictures we saw werenât âusâ, there was something missing from the laughs and smiles that we quickly figured out were all a bit set up and a bit forced, definitely not what we wanted in our pictures at all! Despondent we kept searching the internet and by chance came across Paul, he doesnât particularly advertise anywhere and as he says really doesnât like the forced nature of pushy sales at wedding events, so basically he sits in a little quiet corner of the internet waiting for people like us to find him and lets his pictures do most of the talking. We watched all of his slide shows, looked at all of his pictures, stalked him on Instagram all in the space of an hour and pretty much decided we wanted him as our photographer! We got excited (first time my other half actually got excited about anything to do with wedding planning), filled in his contact form and eagerly waited for him to get back to us, hoping he was available on our date. He was, we were giddy to say the least!
On our actual day Paul was exceptional, if I could think of a better word or description I would. Really though, words canât do him justice. You wouldnât know he was a photographer unless you actually knew he was the photographer, he fits in so well, everyone loved him too. Itâs one thing having fantastic pictures, but weâd been to enough weddings to know we wanted a photographer who wouldnât rub people up the wrong way by always being in our guests faces, and half of the reason you really should book him is his personality and easygoing nature (the other half being the amazing pictures of course), Paul is truly part of your weddingâŚnot in a âheâs a vendor youâve hired wayâ, in a âPeople feel like theyâve known him for ages wayâ, he described himself a wedding infiltrator, and he is - mistaken by the majority at our wedding as an old friend we knew really well, other people could have sworn theyâd met him somewhere before (they hadnât), but heâs got this familiarity about him that puts people at easeâŚsuffice to say heâs an expert at being part of a wedding and fooling people! If you really care about a gallery full of amazing pictures that show the complete story of your wedding, if you really donât want to be mithered, herded, barked orders at or told to smile - if you want a photographer with a cracking personality whoâll enjoy your day right alongside everyone else there and honestly will be just like another guest, you need this very unique wedding photographer at your wedding.
We genuinely couldnât be happier we found Paul, the whole thing is as easy as ask him to be there, hope you are his kind of people, sit him with your friends when you all eat and just leave him to it - you wonât regret it honestly just book him!!
