There’s some saying about “rain before 7, gone by 11″ or something like that.  Maybe it didn’t start raining until after 7am on Irene and Sean’s wedding day, but sadly it kept going beyond 11am, and as they walked down the aisle I finally conceded that the remainder of the days photography would have to be done indoors.  Thankfully, that wasn’t too drastic an option given that indoors was to be the Bridge House Hotel in Tullamore, which I had visited early that morning for the first time, and which I had left unconcerned about the need to capture photographs there. For such a central hotel in a busy town, it has oodles of charm, not to mention a fantastic staircase.  Perfect for a bride to show off her dress, for instance!  Before we got to that photo, there were a few others to capture.

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An Irish winter wedding usually has weather which falls into one of two camps: cold, dry and sunny, or cold, wet and cloudy.  A warm winter day in Ireland is a rare find.  So the cold is a given.  If the bride and groom are lucky, it’ll be a cold day of the dry and sunny variety.   From a photographer’s point of view a winter wedding usually has light which falls into one of two camps also: hard light with lots of strong shadows from a clear blue sky and a low-in-the-sky sun, or soft indirect light (albeit maybe not a lot of it) courtesy of a cloudy overcast sky, which may or may not bring rain, sleet or even snow.  In many ways if the photographer is lucky, it’ll be the latter.   Which would be fine if this preference didn’t often contradict the preference of the bride and groom for that dry sunny day.  Which explains why, at my most recent wedding, on an extremely clear dry (and very cold) day, the bride and groom were delighted with the weather, while I had to work that little bit harder to overcome that the harsh light.  But where there’s a will there’s a way, and I found a way.

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