Bristol Marriott Royal Wedding Photography

A cheeky little styled (ish) shoot at an amazing inner city wedding venue!

Bristol Marriott Royal Wedding Photography

Bristol Marriott Royal Wedding Photography - so, some background to this shoot.  It's not a real wedding and the images were all taken by me, lit by me, couples posed by me etc etc.    I attended a wedding fayre at Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel earlier this year and had a good look around the venue.  I'd been here for meetings but never took the time to really walk around the place.  It's a totally different hotel for a wedding and any couples getting married here have to think differently with regards to photography.  Indeed any wedding photographer (such as me!) needs to think differently.

No wide open spaces, no trees, no grass etc.  But what it does have is a lot of little nooks and crannies and amazing rooms (Palm Court is just WOW.) that with a bit of imagination, vision, skill and extra lighting you can turn into something really dramatic and artful. I hope you will agree with me is what I have done.

So, back to the story.  I asked the hotel if I could come back with a bride, possibly a groom and take some shots for myself of the hotel and in return share them with the hotel.  As is the same in all Marriott's they were great about it.  That sort of snowballed into a highly talented makeup artist called Heather Card offering to be the bride.

Heather Card Professional Makeup

Heather runs her own professional makeup business and caters specifically for weddings as well. Check out her website - Heather Card Professional Makeup.  Heather has been a makeup artist for over 10 years and has lectured media makeup techniques for 8 years.

"Who does not love a wedding? and being able to be part of someone's special day as a job is just the best, I pride myself on giving my brides and the wedding party beautiful natural flawless skin so they can look and feel confident and beautiful in their own skin on their wedding day that truly will last all day. I love romantic soft hairstyles with cascading curls and texture are my go-to style and natural makeup that really just enhances their natural beauty without having to cake them in makeup to achieve this.

I have chosen to specialise in airbrush so I am able to give my brides beautifully flawless skin without the stickiness, stiffness and thickness of conventional makeup it's natural and still allows my brides to look like their beautiful selves on their wedding day"

So Heather was on board and she brought her husband Mike along in a suit as the groom and they also brought their little girl along, Poppy - aged 6, as a flower girl.

Bristol Marriott Royal Wedding Photography - A number of dresses, both wedding, bridesmaid and flower girl were brought along by Nikki Vierk and I'll let her tell you all about her decision in starting her business in her own words -

Nikki from Curve Bridal

"I made the decision to open Curve Bridal as I have a real passion for bridal wear, weddings and of course curves! As a woman with curves myself, I have had many experiences of limited choices in clothing stores and leaving stores feeling deflated and annoyed at being labelled as "plus-size". I realised that I couldn't imagine having these feelings when shopping for the most important dress of your life! And so Curve Bridal was born!"

Curve Bridal
61 Whitecross Road
Weston Super Mare
BS23 1EJ

Flowers

These were provided by Kopend Creations -

"We are bridal flower specialists who can offer bespoke bridal designs with church and venue decorations to compliment. We also offer a very personal and caring home consultation service for bereaved families to discuss their final tributes to their loved ones. We have provided many personalised funeral tributes in various designs."

Moving on...

So we had Heather in the wedding dresses, Mike in the suits, daughter in the flower girl's dress and Nikki in the bridesmaid's dress, a hotel that was happy for us to wander around, a stack of lighting kit (see below), me (worlds most handsome wedding photographer - I've got the official pass to prove it!) and my fabulous assistant for this shoot, Jo Edginton.

I've not done the usual job of curating and editing the heck out of the images - I wanted this to have a real wedding theme not a "styled to hell photoshoot that never happens in real weddings" feel.

The time of the shoot was daytime, started around 2:30 pm and finished around 4:45 pm.  That included three changes of wedding dress also.

Bristol Marriott Royal Wedding Photography Kit List

So, what kit did I make Jo carry around with me?!!

Believe it or not most of what I would use at a wedding.  My standard photography camera bag which has all my lenses in plus the usual stuff I carry (hairspray, hair grips, hairbrush, sewing kit, first aid kit, scissors etc) and my lighting bag which holds my AD600 (not used), AD200's, v860ii, Selens stuff, spare batteries and some strip lights with grids for when I've got time to do side lighting!

• Fuji XT3's.  They rock, and various Fuji lenses - XF35mm f1.4, XF16mm 1.4, XF16-55mm f2.8, XF10-24mm f4
• Godox AD200's x 2
• Godox v860II x 2
• Photix Varos Pro
• Frio Cold Shoe
• Lightstands.  Newer heavy duty light stands.
• Godox X-Pro trigger
• Selens MN-BK 2.  These a Mag Mod copies.  But cheaper; and yes the occasional magnet comes out but it's worth it for the price difference!
• Mag Mod Gels - CTO and CTB.  I used Mag Mod gels as they are way better than Selen's own version and sensibly priced.

Please note - these are NOT affiliated links.  I don't earn a penny from them.

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What next - Bristol Marriott Royal Wedding Photography?

Well if you are a couple getting married at this amazing wedding venue drop me a line.  I'd love to shoot a full wedding here and can arrange a decent discount as it's a Marriott hotel ;-)

If you are a wedding venue and want something similar to show off your venue drop me a line and let's chat.

If you are a photographer and want some training on use the of Off Camera Flash then get in touch - I do run a wide variety of training workshops on a wide variety of photography related subjects!
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