Shire Hall & Hillside Brewery Wedding

John & Aimee’s Festival inspired day

When Aimee walked in to the ceremony room at Shire Hall, Gloucester – the biggest of smiles appeared on John’s face, enough to light a thousand rooms.

At the heart of their big day was the importance of friends, family and togetherness. This was very clear to see from the day before when I popped up to the venue at Hillside Brewery, Gloucestershire. They were all there, decorating, building, creating, preparing – all coming together as families and friends.

John and Aimee it was an absolute pleasure to photograph your wedding day, I have so many fond memories from that weekend at Longhope, I felt part of the family. I wish you all the love and happiness.

Their Family and friends stayed at the Farmers Boy Inn for the weekend, the bride got ready here and the groom camped at the venue just down the road.

Aimee’s Sorbern bridal shoes were gorgeous! something blue and matched the colour scheme of their day.

The flowers were designed by their good friend Karen Lambert-Cox from Wild Roses Florist.

We drove through the idyllic Gloucestershire countryside, Blue skies and beautiful fields surrounded us. The weekend of the wedding coincided with the annual Gloucester Classic and Retro Festival, so as well as the normal busyness of the town, it was thriving with classic military outfits, vehicles and food. John had arranged a surprise car for Aimee, it was a vintage Citroen provided by 2CV Wedding Cars.

John and Aimee chose to switch the perspective, to have the registrar in the aisle so that they spoke to everyone.

We then popped to Hillside Brewery to do some relaxed family group photos in the sunshine. It was one of the hottest days of 2019.

While the others made their way back to the family dinner, we took five minutes to photograph the car at Hillside Brewery.

All of the signage and styling was designed and created by the Bride and Groom, they are both graphic designers with their own company.

The decoration inside of Hillside Brewery’s main barn was perfectly suited to both the venues main business, and the couples wedding styling. They used the hops as the table runners and railing swags, bringing the outside inside and enhancing the festival party feeling.

The bride and groom arrives and is led in by some amazing acoustic music by two members of the Wolfpack.

All of their guests were armed with confetti and well wishes ready for the new Mr & Mrs!

Huge Congratulations! what us Welsh loves to call cwtches – its translated as a hug or a cuddle but it much more than that, it brings with it a sense of home, family and closeness. John and Aimee hadn’t planned to have a receiving line, it just happened naturally – they were able to greet everyone and knew they’d had a chat with everyone as they came in.

Lots of words of love, banter and a sing-a-long.

I remember spending some time with the bouquet, balancing it so that it sat on top of this barrel, then positioning the ribbons so that you could still read the venue name. I love the colour of the flowers – happiness in a bouquet! Well done Wild Roses Florist!

And after lots of mingling we went out for some photos, to give Aimee and John a little time together and get some gorgeous and fun photos.

Simply wandering in beautiful light, hand in hand, no huge poses, just each other.

Its important to remember that not everyone wants lots of romantic photos, some want to be pesky and fun. In the moments in between I let my couples be natural, if they want to have fun photos I encourage it! sometimes you learn what you want at the pre-wedding session.