Odda’s Chapel Wedding

Wedding: Odda’s Chapel – Ceremony: Overbury Village Hall

Annelies and Louis married twice – their first time was in Belgium and I got to cover the second day of celebrations in England. This part of the celebrations is Super-English

And what a day it was – it was very very rainy and I drove down to Gloucestershire and all the roads were flooded! We met at a rickety old house at Haw Farm. Everyone obviously very concerned about whether we’d actually make it through all the flooding to the chapel -and yet, everyone was strangely relaxed.

But we made it to Odda’s Chapel – which is a beautiful Ancient Saxon Chapel in Deerhurst. It was a cold rainy day in October and there was no heat and very little light.

“One of the most complete surviving Saxon churches in England, this chapel was built in 1056 by Earl Odda, a relation of Edward the Confessor.” – English heritage

But light isn’t all about quantity, sometimes the most amazing light there is very little of it about, and it has this amazing, soft quality. (For the photographers reading, I was mainly using my 33mm 0.95 Mitakon lens, which doesn’t give the sharpest photos at the best of times, and has to be manually focused). And I think the technical imperfections give the photos a lovely filmic look that is very hard to fake. (Although I may be trying to push things a bit in that direction this season, as I love the look)

As for heat, I found my own anxiety kept me warm enough…

(Random Fun fact that doesn’t fit in anywhere else;  The week before I’d been reading Book of Bones by John Connelly – a horror novel taking in a lot of  the ancient temples around the UK – and including a ghostly scene at Odda’s Chapel)

Where were we? It was an emotional ceremony, held in a beautiful ancient church on a rainy day in Gloucestershire. They used an infinity bottle where family mix a drink in a special bottle to celebrate the coming together of two families. The guy who was supposed to be playing guitar had got stuck up the other end of the country because of all the flooding, and their friend Aaron stepped in at the last minute (we saw the other guy later – he was really good – his name was Morgan T Davis).

The reception was held at Overbury Village Hall. With lots of wonderful DIY decorations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone make a village hall look so lavish, decked out with lights and conkers, candles and hundreds of cascading autumnal leaves. Did I mention it was super-english? There was soup and hog roast and conkers and all sorts.