The wedding of John and Sharon was on a Saturday in late November at the magnificent Rochdale Town Hall,were we’ve never covered a wedding here before though,as always,we do a reconnaissance prior to it and was amazed at what a stunning building it is.It has the classic Victorian architecture on the outside as does a lot of public buildings of the time do, but inside you have The Great Hall,The Grand Staircase leading to the Exchange,the town hall reception that doubles as the ceremony room on wedding days.We were covering the ceremony on to the first dance,so we turned up well early and got the guests arriving accompanied by two bagpipers,luckily the weather was dry. The bridesmaids came down The Great Staircase first and then the Bride and her son.The ceremony started and a first for us,owls would be used as ring bearers,exciting!

It all went smoothly and was a superb spectacle,the owl did good.After the registry signing everyone went outside to have pictures taken of the owls,and whilst outside I manages to do a group shot of everyone with me being on a first floor balcony,and it still stayed dry.The wedding breakfast followed with the speeches first,later we got the bride and groom outside to do our trademark umbrella shot and confetti shot.Then we got some set up shots on the Grand staircase and further group shots at the top of the staircase. On the reconnaissance we found a spiral staircase running down to the registry office,we thought this would make a fantastic shoot.The evening guests started turning up and the cake cutting started and the First dance proceeded before everyone filled d the dance floor.

Ring bearer Owl flying back to the handler.

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We'd already done a recce in Blackpool of the place.the place in question,The Great Hall at Mains,a timber framed building,built to replicate the original banqueting hall that stood on the exact site some 500 years ago ,that's some history. The Great Hall was designed by Adele and Roger Yeoman , in 2004 and was constructed as a purpose built venue to replace an older and smaller building once affectionately known as The Royal Garden Room. So we'd been to check on the venue for the group shots and the bride and groom shots, the venue and gardens were smaller looking than on their website and we were glad we had the opportunity to check the place out. This was no ordinary wedding,it was a double wedding ,both sisters getting married at the same time,a first for Avanti,we were only commissioned to photo Craig and Mona getting wed,but we were looking forward to getting as much of this event on camera as we could we might never do another again!