Wedding Practice

OK, I know.  I've been very lazy and not posted for months.  It's my normal winter time lack of enthusiasm that seems to overtake me for longer every year.  I've no taken many photos in the past months and to be honest most of the photos on this post were taken by my wife as I was busy doing my part in the practice and are in some of them.

So my eldest daughter was married at the end of March and we went to a practice at the Church a couple of evenings before the big day.  The practice was at the All Hallows Church in Almondbury, Huddersfield.  It is a beautiful old church across the road from the Woolpack pub which is run by Dan Martin, my new son in law.

The practice went through the whole ceremony and enabled us to know what we were to do on the day and to make some decisions about the fine details.  In this first photo we are receiving final instructions from Rob the vicar who is a friend of Emma's from the school where she works. He was very laid back and humorous during the practice and the wedding for real.

Here we are about to start off down the aisle which involved splitting around the big old font and then getting back together again.  We had to make sure we didn't go too fast as Rob said that some people end up almost sprinting down to the front of the church.

The other Rob did the first reading which was all about the meaning of love and he was so nervous.  But he did a great job and had everyone in tears, at the practice and at the wedding.  I think maybe the "Spank the Monkey" t-shirt was a little inappropriate for the location but no-one seemed to mind.

Here are three of the bridesmaids and a substitute (Rob's (not the vicar) girlfriend) for the evening, stood in the aisle during the first part of the ceremony.  I am quite impressed with Lynne's (my wife) composition of the photo with the bible in the foreground.  Maybe she should be the photographer of the family rather than me.

Here's Rob and Owen (Dans half brother) intently watching the proceedings.  A bit like a couple of rather odd looking bookends with their arms folded.

Here's the happy couple exchanging rings with Will (the best man) looking on.  There's me again in the background and even though I'd finished my participation in the ceremony I couldn't get my camera back from Lynne.

This must be a serious part of the ceremony as they are knelt before the vicar.

Here's Ellen doing the second reading which was an extract from The Velveteen Rabbit where the Skin Horse explains to Rabbit about what it means to be real.  Another tear jerker which I'm glad that I heard at the practice otherwise I'd have been in pieces at the real wedding.

Finally managed to rescue my camera from Lynne and grab a quick candid of her with Emma and Laura.  She really doesn't like having her photo taken so I had to be a bit sneaky to get this one.

Finally we have Emma and Joanne leaving the church to pop over the road to the pub for a quick drink before heading off home.  Emma looks pretty excited about getting through the practice and looking forward to the real thing after two more sleeps.

Next time I have some photos that I took from the wedding day morning.  I didn't take my camera to the wedding as we had a professional photographer who took some amazing shots and I'll link to his site and blog in my next post.  We also are accumulating hundreds of photos taken by people at the wedding and the rest of the day so I might post some of those too at a later date.