This is a wedding I've had the pleasure of featuring before on the blog, and two of my favourite venues! This wonderful couple married at the sublime Sherborne Abbey in Dorset, followed by a wedding reception just across the border into Somerset at Brympton House. You can see the blog featuring images from the wedding ceremony right here, as well as beautiful moments from the bridal prep on this blog. But, now let's skip ahead to the other end of the wedding day, and check out some of the best moments from the first dance wedding photography at Brympton House - as well as other key events during the evening!
There are some more traditional aspects of a wedding day that I'm now finding, as a wedding photographer, are becoming less popular during the weddings I photograph. That's not to say that they aren't relevant, or fun, or meaningful - it often just means that we're now in times when weddings are more individual and the couple feel that they don't have to follow tradition if they don't want to! For example, throwing the bouquet is an event I now photograph at less than half of my weddings, and even rarer is the 'throwing the garter'. But, I am glad to say, at this lovely wedding, the couple decided to include both of these moments into their big day, and they went down a storm with the guests!
So what are the meanings behind these traditions? I think most of us probably know that the throwing of the bouquet by the bride is done to bestow the gift of 'the next wedding' onto the person that catches it - but what about the garter toss? Well, a superstition was that owning a piece of a bride's wedding dress would bestow good luck onto the owner, which is why the wearing of the garter became common - so that the bride had something of her wedding attire to give without actually ripping her dress to pieces! The actual garter toss is traditionally done by the groom to the unmarried men in the room, again to bestow the gift of being the next to be married upon the owner. And, of course, the groom is the one to remove the garter from the bride's leg before the toss, whilst the guests look on.
Choosing to include the garter toss and the bouquet throw into your wedding is an entirely personal choice and one that should fit with your own personality. If you think you'll be embarrassed by the event, then you don't need to do it! But, if you feel that it will be a fun thing to do which will get the party going with a swing... then why not? And as you can see from these images from this Brympton House evening wedding reception, both these events went down an absolute storm with the guests - although it was the best man who decided to take it upon himself to toss the garter in this case! He snatched it so quickly and unexpectedly from the groom that it required absolute lightning reflexes on my part to capture this moment - phew!
So on to the images from the first dance and evening celebrations from this lovely Brympton House wedding reception - I do hope you enjoy these and get a sense of how much fun the guests had on this truly unforgettable wedding day!
First Dance Wedding Photography at Brympton House
Click on any of the images below to open a lightbox , to quickly scroll through the photographs. Easy!
