Jenna and Chris’ Brighton Stanmer House Wedding

A blast from the past now, back to 2013 and a pivotal moment in my career as a wedding photographer , courtesy of the lovely Jenna and Chris! The previous year, in 2012, I’d made the decision to concentrate purely on documenting weddings and in order to achieve this I had to improve my reach to attract more couples and replace my corporate work. That’s by no means an easy task, but undeterred by any barriers I set about blogging every wedding moment I could and covering every social media angle possible. I was determined to succeed and just shoot weddings!

So back to a cold and windy winters day in early 2013 and a challenge I’d set myself in preparation for a 140 mile charity cycle ride from Bournemouth to Brighton. On this particular day I’d been on a 17 mile cycle ride over the South Downs and was in the process of attacking my final hill, climbing up from Poynings at the foot of the Downs to the Devil’s Dyke at the top, when my mobile rang. I wasn’t going to take any chances and miss an opportunity for a wedding, so I decided to stop my bike and answer the phone, a no brainer when you’re battling a force 7 headwind up a hill! In a somewhat breathless voice I began my conversation with a very excited bride-to-be, who’d come across my weddings online and was very enthusiastic about the prospect of booking me for her wedding. That lady was Jenna West and I knew in the first few moments that we shared the same energy and vision and that I wanted to work with her. The first question to answer was about my availability, so you can imagine my relief when I confirmed that I was available on their date and the conversation could move onto my rates and coverages on offer. It must have been fate because our entire conversation and our expectations were completely aligned and it seemed like a forgone conclusion that we would be working together. Within a day or two we’d finalised the contract and I was indeed booked to shoot their wedding at Stanmer House that coming May, as well as a pre-wedding shoot beforehand. I knew the prospect was an exciting one, but both Jenna and Chris’ energy and enthusiasm went beyond my expectations and consequently we enjoyed many beautiful moments together, which is clear to see in their beautiful images below.

Now then, you’d think that with my drive to book as many couples as possible by taking every opportunity to blog, that I’d have blogged their wedding, but you’d be wrong. I never managed to find time to blog their wedding, in part because my 2012/13 drive for more weddings had paid off and was keeping me very busy, plus this new found energy for weddings was so infectious that I pretty much booked every couple that came my way! Times were great and from this moment on I knew my hunger for weddings would keep growing and I would work hard to excel at my craft and become the best wedding photographer I could possibly be.

…….. and so finally, fast track to now, winter in early 2020, and a few days ago I sat down to work on my website and add wedding blog post links to my recommended wedding venue pages, to further my constant bid to attract cool and enthusiastic couples. It was only when creating a Stanmer House page that I realised I had never blogged Jenna and Chris’ wedding, which is crazy when they’re a young and cool couple. It’s also crazy because they were often in my mind because I worked alongside Jenna at numerous weddings. The reason for that is because Jenna West is an accomplished and brilliant hair and make-up artist who’s now a friend and whom I regularly recommend to my couples. They absolutely love her and her friendly professional approach! Having realised my short sightedness I started the process of image selection. Lots had changed with technology since then so I decided that a 2020 makeover was in order. Reliving those moments whilst editing the images was a joy and it seemed only fitting to treat them as I would treat all my clients, by creating a slideshow and giving them access to the images in an online gallery for downloading. The slideshow was very well received and I’m confident the blog post will be too, but hey, I’ll let you the viewer be the judge of that! Enjoy this and thanks so much guys for choosing me and making this possible! P xx