Carys & Dan's Wedding, Sherbrooke Castle Hotel

Back in April, the unthinkable happened. I became so ill I had to pull out of a wedding. Carys and Dan's wedding - you can read all about what happened here.

Once again, I have to thank Dougie Cunningham from Leading Lines Photography who came to my rescue with less than 48 hours to go. I can't thank him enough really as he went above and beyond so that Carys and Dan didn't go into panic mode.

As a result of the bizarre turn of events, the images you'll find in this post weren't actually captured by me, but Dougie. However, he did give them all over to me and I've done all of the editing so you could almost call it a team effort.

My experience of Carys and Dan is based purely on their engagement shoot which you can see here. They're a couple who ooze love for the other and who just enjoy being in each others company. Well that's the impression I got anyway. I can only begin to imagine what their wedding day was like and I'm incredibly sad that I missed it.

Just quickly, a few people worthy of a mention are Dougie who I've told you about above, Little Botanica who created the most amazing floral  bouquets (see the images below) and Asteria Bridal who made Carys and her bridesmaids look amazing!

For Carys and Dan and all of their friends and family, this is their story as captured on their wedding day.

When I'm not taking photos...

...I build fresh, clean looking websites for passionate small businesses. Websites that work, be it on your desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile phone. 

If you're a regular follower of my ramblings both on here and on social media, you'll know that back in November I took the brave decision to shut my own website down. For a month! It gave me the breathing space to completely rebuild my website on a brand new platform. I enjoyed every minute of it and it wasn't long until I was asked to build a basic website for somebody else. So I did.

That somebody was Sarah Vaughan, not the famous jazz singer, but an aspiring author who had her first novel The Art of Baking Blind published by Hodder last year. The crucial elements that Sarah needed was a bit about her as an author, a bit about the book and then the reviews and articles that have been written about both of those things. And crucially, Sarah has started to write blog posts that are now a firm part of her website. Sarah now has a foundation from which to build and shout about her writing abilities. A place to point people to whenever she's talking about her work.

This is what you'll see when you visit www.sarahvaughanauthor.com

And here's what Sarah said about her brand new website:

"Dear Marc,
I just wanted to thank you so much for the fantastic website you created for me. Everyone who has seen it has been struck by how elegant, clean and sharp it looks. "The website looks great: so simple and pretty and easy to use" is a typical response. I am particularly grateful for the lovely landing page photo you created for me; the colours merge beautifully with the site and my novel and it's just the sort of impression I wanted to create. You've also been so kind in helping me navigate it afterwards, and put up with a lot from this technophobe."

If you're a passionate small business and need a fresh, clean and simple website that punches above its weight, then get in touch and we can talk about it over a coffee or a Skype call in which case we can both make our own coffee.

Sarah & Stewart's Wedding, Lodge on Loch Lomond

March was filled with warm spring days and sunshine, looking good then for Sarah and Stewart's Loch-side wedding. Well, not quite. The day before we had snow. Chances of an outdoor ceremony dropped to zero, but there was a glimmer of hope in getting a snow capped Ben Lomond in the background for some shots. Well that never happened either due to the low cloud cover. Scottish weather eh?!

I've known Sarah for a few years now, first meeting her at one of her small business network events. It's been lovely to get to know both of them and to see their gorgeous girls Emily and Charlotte grow ever bigger. I'm very much looking forward to visiting them again in the coming weeks (they have a sparkly new coffee machine that looks like a Starbucks implant and I plan on testing out their new barista skills!).

Sarah, Stewart and I had talked on a few occasions about the wedding. One of the things I was very excited about was seeing the flowers and favours for the girls. I know I know, me, getting excited about flowers! Well, if I were to tell you that all of Sarah's flowers were grown from seed on Mill Pond Flower Farm especially for the occasion, would my excitement make sense? Other lovely details included Sarah's hand painted wedding shoes, some hand painted driftwood from Arran and 'that' cake! Lovely.

There was such a lovely atmosphere in Sarah's room where she was getting ready with her mum and sister. It has to be a first greeting a brides mother by her Twitter handle: Jane on Arran! Laura Gray also added to that atmosphere and was great to work with. Then watching Emily and Charlotte watch in awe of their mum in her wedding dress, fabulous.

All in all, Sarah & Stewart's wedding day was filled with awesomeness. I dare say it was their perfect day and the day they had planned for for so long, seeing everything come together. And they finally got to dance to Isn't She Lovely by Stevie Wonder! But if that wasn't enough, their second song was sung by Sarah's step sister who covered There You'll Be by Faith Hill, wow!

It was such an amazing privilege to spend the day with them and all of their friends and family. Thanks for having me. Here is a selection of my favourite images from the day, but before you delve right in, check out these fantastic people who all helped in some small way.

Laura Gray - hair and makeup - www.lauragray.co.uk

Three Isles Designs - wishing tree and flowers in hair - www.threeislesdesigns.com

Mill Pond Flower Farm - flowers - www.millpondflowerfarm.co.uk

Taste Linda's Cakes - wedding cake - www.tlscakes.co.uk

Lodge on Loch Lomond - venue - www.loch-lomond.co.uk

Quarriers Village, the perfect setting

When I was asked if I could recommend a location for a family shoot recently, after looking at their locations where they lived, there was no other option than Quarriers Village. Having once worked in the Village for many years, I had embarked on lots of lunchtime walks and so it's fair to say I know it very well.

I parked up expecting to see Dawn and her family. It turned out they were all cowering behind Sommerville Weir Hall, home of Three Sisters Bake. Why? Because when you walked around to that side of the building, it was immediately clear that you were then sheltered from what can only be described as an Arctic wind. So everybody was slightly chilly and we hadn't even begun yet!

We started on the bridge, but I could see how cold everybody was so I made a quick decision to head down by the river, out of the wind and therefore out of the cold. It was to prove a wise decision and the sun shining did help lift the mood in the camp.

With so many nooks and crannies to choose from in Quarriers Village, every shoot I do there is always very different from the last. And this was the first time I'd done a family shoot down by the river!

Here is a small selection of what I captured that day, I particularly like the shots of the two girls with their dad. Maybe one day my own daughter will still love me this much in years to come.

The chase was most definitely on

The best types of family shoots are those where there's no pre-conceived ideas of having to stand still, face the camera and say 'cheese'!!! I've come to hate that word very much. Because let's face it, pretty much everyone (who isn't a photographer) has more or less that expectation of a photo shoot, right?

Well not where I'm concerned. Kids are kids. They rarely sit still if asked, never smile when you want them to and always want to do whatever the hell they like! Trust me, I have three little rascals of my own, I should know.

When it came to the McDougall Family, the grown ups told me they didn't want to be in the photos and so I just had the kids to concentrate on. Cara and Jaimie were absolutely fabulous with Cara wanting to pose for the camera every time I pointed it at her. Meanwhile Jaimie just wanted to run and run and run and run some more. But he absolutely loved his big sister.

Lunderston Bay, near Inverkip, deep in the woods was where we chose to explore and err...get very very muddy! Here is a small selection of what we got up to.