A Romantic Engagement Story and Cheshire Pre-wedding Photo Shoot

Jayne and Steve’s Cheshire engage­ment photography

Steve and I got engaged in Novem­ber 2011. He took me for a sur­prise week­end away, we just got in the car and headed North, even­tu­ally arriv­ing in Edin­burgh which is where we stayed for the week­end at the Radis­son hotel on the royal mile, in a suite!! Edin­burgh is one of my favorite cities so when I saw where we were going and the hotel I cried.

Then it got even bet­ter, on the Sat­ur­day he took me over to St Andrews for the day, a place very close to my heart because I went to uni­ver­sity there and it’s where I spent some of the best years of my life. Many of the guests at the wed­ding are my friends who I met there, and all of whom are now Steve’s friends too, but he had never seen the place before and it was great to show him around.

In the after­noon we walked down to west sands beach, which is a beau­ti­ful stretch of beach which over­looks the town (and appeared in the Char­i­ots of Fire sketch in the Olympic open­ing cer­e­mony) and this is where Steve turned to me, pulled out a dia­mond ring, got down on one knee and pro­posed to me.

We then headed back to Edin­burgh for a lovely meal and didn’t tell any­one until the Sunday.

All very roman­tic and now the place means some­thing to both of us. He couldn’t have done it bet­ter.

Mov­ing on from there, the wed­ding plan­ning started straight away. We wanted to get mar­ried this year so I had booked 10 venue view­ings within a fort­night of get­ting engaged!

Plan­ning is going well, I think I have been quite organ­ised with the big stuff being boxed off quite early on and now I am just try­ing to fill in the details, with a weekly to do list set out between now and the wed­ding, although of course Steve would tell you it’s all sorted

My dress is by designer Jonathan James Cou­ture and I’m very for­tu­nate that, because I am get­ting the dress from their flag­ship shop in Chester, they have waited as long as they pos­si­bly can to take my mea­sure­ments before mak­ing the dress. This has allowed me more time to lose weight and after a year on Weight Watch­ers I have man­aged to lose 3 stone, and am the light­est I have been for 10 years! My mea­sure­ments get taken on Sat­ur­day and I am so excited!!!

Our wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers Jamie and Tory have been fan­tas­tic and so sup­port­ive through­out this whole process, I told them they are like mini wed­ding plan­ners. The e-session we had with them was great fun, learn­ing to be together in front of the camera!!

Even Steve, who as a bloke thought it may be cheesy, loved every sec­ond and we would rec­om­mend it to any­one. We per­son­ally thought it was a great oppor­tu­nity to get used to be in front of the cam­era — Steve not as com­fort­able as me, get to know Tory and Jamie more, under­stand how they work, what their style of shoot­ing is and how we will pick our pho­tos on the day.

Not only that but being pho­tographed in such a way also got quite emo­tional — it’s actu­ally quite an inti­mate thing and it’s almost like you get alone spe­cial time in front of that cam­era. We could imag­ine being there in front of the cam­era on the big day and made the whole wed­ding feel closer and real in the most excit­ing way.

It also works the same for them, they learn what we like and don’t like so that on the day Jamie is tak­ing the right kind of pic­tures for us. Plus you get to see what their pho­tos are like — we were so pleased after­wards it reas­sured us that we have made the right pho­tog­ra­pher choice and we know the wed­ding pho­tos will be fantastic.

Tory and Jamie then lis­tened to me for nearly two hours talk­ing about wed­ding plans, lis­ten­ing intently offer­ing help and advice along the way. They are much more than just wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers and I’ve already said to Steve that when the chil­dren come along I would like the guys to be the pho­tog­ra­pher we pick then too. http://www.vickerstaffphotography.co.uk/

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