Halfway Through

Well ............ I shot the wedding - next comes the processing!

Got stuck behind a huge caravan and some tourists who didn't know where the accelerator pedal was on the way to South Queensferry so my 'few extra minutes' didn't exist when I got there.
Managed to find the last parking space in the area I would be leaving from, then walked all the way to the other end of town (in the sun, all dressed up, with all my gear!) to the hotel where the groom & best man were.
The staff there were as useful as a chocolate teapot in finding which room they were in. No phone signal inside the building. Grooms mobile going straight to answerphone when trying back out in the street. Grooms brother didn't know the room either! Eventually the groom phoned and gave me his room number before the signal vanished again as I neared the front door.
Took some pictures .... dressed the groom (how can a Scotsman not know how to put on a kilt, belt & sporran, bow tie or tie a pair of dress brogues?), then more pictures outside before I had to leg it back to the other end of town again (in hotter sun!) to shoot the bride.
The bride didn't want any pictures of her getting ready! ...... or the dress/accessories.
So I took some shots of her son & daughter-in-law and helped another guest with his bow tie while I waited.

The light in the room was impossible so we gave up and went across the road to the war memorial garden instead (after everyone else who was staying in that hotel had left.....she wanted nobody to see her or the dress until she got to the church).
That done (and running late) I legged it back to the car and headed off to the church as she was getting into the car.

My phone went and didn't get picked up by the car system. As I stopped in a queue of traffic I was able to see it was the bride. Then the traffic moved again! - and my car told me there was a problem with the sat-nav (which I wasn't using). That was what was causing the problem with the phone pick-up. The whole system then went into reset mode while I was in stop/start traffic and praying this wasn't because of something to do with the phaffing about with the traffic on the new bridge.

As the phone/sat-nav came to life again and I had changed my intended route incase I had to go back to the hotel for something the phone went again..... some scamming barstard about a non existant accident 2 years ago. He got a mouthful of abuse like he would never have had on the before (the kind that is actually illegal on telecommunication lines).

I was now commited to a longer, slower route to the church. So much for getting all the guests as they arrived!
But I got there before a lot of them and more importantly - before the bride!

From there on it seemed to go okay.

I left at  the same time as the bride and groom while everybody else did their final Hello's to family they hadn't seen for quite some time (one family had come straight from the airport due to a delay in the flight from Canada).
The bridal car came off the motorway earlier than I expected (I hoped he didn't know something I didn't).
Once again I got the last space in the carpark round the corner from the hotel (somebody was looking down on me) and found that I was there just before the bride and groom and just after SWMBO.
Perfect.

After a short time milling about while everyone arrived it was onto the formal group shots that the couple wanted.
Two of the ushers did the cat herding and it all went fine ....ish.
One of the shots had to wait until later as a young chap was having a feed and the group shot of everyone had to be re-jigged. The original plan of everyone on the beach and me on the hotel balcany looking down couldn't be done due to the infirmity of the groom's mother (and it was taken already). Plan B of using the steps (even if they had been painted in a weird way) also had to be scrapped due to another wedding party from the registary office taken them (and the restaraunt balcony right next to it). Plan C was me on the beach and everyone else on the hotel balcony. Not ideal and there may have to bee a bit of editing done to get every face in view (but I took a dozen shots so hopefully I can manage).

Speaches (not the usual type it has to be said but very in keeping with the people and circumstances of their meeting) and cake cutting shots were done and lots of evening dancing and 'candids' were done including ones of people watching the showoff in the boat (we thought he had fallen out at one point ... he certainly lost control) and the lights coming on on the bridge.

I had been taking painkillers most of the day (not of the liquid variety) but my back finally gave out after 11 hours and I had to call it a night.

Now comes the nightmare of processing.