There’s a strange thing that happens when you photograph enough weddings within the same group of friends. Eventually, you stop walking into weddings feeling like the photographer.
By the time I arrived at Wildwood in Kangaroo Valley for Adrian and Adelaide’s wedding, I already knew plenty of the people there. I’d photographed another wedding within their friendship group, spent time around their friends and, most importantly, I wasn’t some random bloke turning up with cameras asking everybody to act naturally.
That familiarity ended up being one of my favourite things about their wedding, because the best photographs from the day came when nobody particularly cared that I was standing there anymore.
A wildwood wedding that felt completely 'them'
Adrian and Adelaide’s wedding had this brilliant combination of genuinely meaningful moments and complete stupidity.
Before the ceremony, they disappeared away together into Wildwood’s cave to read private vows to each other. Away from everybody else, they had this quiet little part of the wedding that belonged entirely to them before heading back out to join their family and friends.
Then there were their dogs, who were part of the wedding and helped with the rings. Even choosing a witness wasn't going to be unnecessarily formal. They did it through a lucky dip.
It was personal without feeling overly serious, which pretty much set the tone for everything that followed. It was also incredibly hot. The kind of wedding day where everybody is very aware of the temperature, but somehow this group just kept going.
After the ceremony there were portraits and time with everyone, but as the afternoon continued, the day became progressively less sensible.
At one point the other Adrian discovered he had a tick attached to him. Fortunately Alyssa, who is a paramedic, was there and removed it for him. I'm fairly certain tick removal wasn't on Adrian and Adelaide’s original wedding timeline, but it gives you a pretty good idea of the sort of day we were having.
All bets were off
Once the reception got going, there was very little concern about behaving nicely for the cameras. There were games, flying chairs and eventually a dancefloor that at times looked more like a mosh pit. People were completely comfortable with one another, and nobody seemed particularly concerned about whether what they were doing was going to make an elegant wedding photograph. Which, ironically, is exactly why I like the photographs so much.
I wasn't asking anyone to be ridiculous. I wasn't trying to manufacture some wild wedding gallery because I thought it would look interesting. I was simply photographing what was already happening. And because I wasn't a complete stranger to many of the people there, they didn't particularly care that I was watching.
When the photographer stops feeling like an 'outsider'
I can’t promise I’ll genuinely become your best mate before your wedding. Nobody can, and you've probably already got a best friend anyway. But I can make sure I don’t feel like a stranger when I walk through the door. There’s a difference.
When people are conscious of the photographer, they filter themselves a little, even if they swear they don't or won't. They notice the camera. They stand differently. Sometimes they'll stop whatever ridiculous thing they were doing the moment they realise they're being photographed. The more comfortable people become with me being there, the less that happens.
Adrian and Adelaide’s wedding is one of my favourite examples of it. Their gallery could move from something as private as the two of them reading vows alone in a cave to complete chaos with their friends later that night (not to mention the boys earlier in the day), because both were genuinely parts of their wedding.
I didn't need one version of them for the photographs. I just needed access to all of it. Having a photographer you trust and feel comfortable with is a game changer.
Part of a bigger story
I’d actually first met Adrian a few years earlier at Alissa and Nick’s wedding at Bimbadgen Palmers Lane in the Hunter Valley. Daniela and I had met Alissa almost completely by chance after living in the same apartment building in Cronulla, and that chance meeting eventually led to me photographing their wedding (it was an absolute cracker, one of the days of my career).
Adrian and I got talking properly that day, and he told me that when he and Adelaide eventually got married, he'd get in touch. People say things like that at weddings all the time, so I never really expect it to happen, even if I am hoping it does.
Adrian did get in touch though. Adrian is an absolute man of his word I would later find out.
That connection continued at Wildwood. Ross and Ebony, another couple from the same friendship group, were there too, and both asked me to shoot their wedding the following May. I was pretty sure they would get in touch, again, hopeful they would. And they did! The very next morning I woke up to an email from them. Ross would later describe me in his review as “our group photographer.”
Somehow, one chance meeting had turned into three weddings within the same group of friends. More importantly for Adrian and Adelaide’s wedding, it meant I walked into Wildwood with a level of familiarity and trust that had already been building for years.
Photographing people as they are
Familiarity doesn't mean I photograph every couple in a friendship group the same way. If anything, it gives me more freedom to see what makes each of them different.
For Adrian and Adelaide, that meant private vows in a cave, dogs carrying rings and a lucky-dip witness. It meant an incredibly hot day, a completely unexpected tick removal and a reception where chairs were flying and the dancefloor descended into a mosh pit.
None of those things needed to be made more “wedding-like” for the photographs. They just needed to be allowed to happen. That's ultimately what I want when I photograph a wedding. I don't need everybody to treat me like their best mate. I just want the camera to become irrelevant enough that people stop changing what they're doing because I'm there.
Because once that happens, I can stop photographing the version of people they think I want to see, and photograph who they actually are.
Vendors
Wedding: Adrian & Adelaide
Venue: Wildwood, Kangaroo Valley
Wedding Coordinator: Charlie, Wildwood
Celebrant: Shoshanna Vernham, Curator of Love Stories
Music & MC: Kate, White Clover Music
Catering: Bumpy Road Catering
Hair & Makeup: Olivia Hocroft & Candace, South Coast Hair and Makeup
Pet Chaperone: Caylee Raine, S & N Pet Services
Live Wedding Artist: Teresa Small, Live Wedding Painting
Photography: James White Photography
