Mark and Lizzy | The Wedding

Cut to Old Years' Night, the end of 2011, celebrated with a trip to Nottingham and the wedding of Lizzy and Mark.

I'm not always the biggest fan of New Years Eve, much preferring a quiet night and large helpings of pancakes on New Years Day instead. So I was actually quite delighted to duck out of the dilemma of what to do by taking the opportunity to partake of someone else's double celebration - with a group of people who seemed doubly in the mood for a good time. (It did please me to return home just before midnight and hear about Dan's wild festivities of listening to a radio 3 documentary on the communication of sheep during lambing season).

So, some of my favourite things:
The relationships: I met with Lizzy and Mark back in October time, we talked wedding of course, but also talked a lot about Lizzy's new venture into setting up a photography business. It felt like a lovely connection - to both share some of the emotional processes that go on behind the scenes. I felt a gentle fondness for them both from this moment - which only increased on the day, in the quiet moments where the job of photographer and accompanier intertwine - and even more so chatting on the phone afterwards.

Leaving the church: A unusual highlight - but I realised I'd never been to a wedding where the couple exited the church to the sound of pealing bells, went straight down to their car and were waved off a by a crowd of their nearest and dearest with no hanging around. There was such a lovely pace to the timing of it.

The church: This was the church of Lizzy's late grandparents, where family Christenings had occurred, but also, co-incidentally, where the parents of Lindsay and Amy got married. I enjoyed the sense of these different family history's that I was meeting, just for a moment, before they went off to develop in their own directions, heightened by meeting Amy's new baby at this wedding.

The atmosphere: Helped no doubt by New Year's Eve and that people were staying in the reception hotel so didn't have to think about leaving; there was a sense that everyone was very much present to being there and having a good time. It was lovely to participate in the general sense of delightedness both of Lizzy and Mark as individuals and as a couple, and seeing a commitment to relationships shining through the way these two choose to do life.

All images ©KateCooperPhotography2011