We just want to enjoy our wedding.

If you’re anything like most of the brides I talk to, there’s a worry sitting somewhere underneath all the excitement: what if having a photographer and a videographer there changes the day? What if you end up performing for a camera instead of actually living your own wedding?

Jen had that worry too, more or less word for word. When we first spoke, she didn’t send a shot list or a Pinterest board of film styles. She told me she just wanted to enjoy her wedding — and asked whether that was even compatible with hiring someone to film it. It is. Here’s what that actually looked like on the day.

They weren’t building their wedding around a film. I built the film around their wedding.

You won’t remember me being there

Before the day I spent time reading up on Highden and the grounds around it — the history of the house, how the gardens were laid out, where the light would fall by late afternoon. I do that so I’m not working a place out with a camera in my hand while you’re trying to get married. By the time I arrived, I already half knew where I was.

The ceremony sat inside a Victorian-style walled garden that’s still a working one — mature planting everywhere, courgettes the size of an elbow, pears ripening on the trees, bees moving through it all afternoon. Sunflowers, wildflowers and rainbow streamers ran through the styling in strong yellows and greens. Nobody was posing in front of any of it. It was just where the day happened to be, and I was there to notice it, not rearrange it.

Nothing was staged for the camera

This is usually the part that worries people most, so it’s worth saying plainly: nothing you’ll see in Jen and Max’s film was set up to look good on film. Live music ran the entire day and kept changing the mood as it went — a two-man band for the ceremony, a three-piece under the tent while everyone had a drink, a rock band in the evening, with a proper mix of good music running through it all, plenty of R&B and soul among it. That shift in energy happened because that’s what the day was, not because anyone was directing it for a shot.

Thai poems were read during the ceremony, which gave that part of the day a stillness the rest of it didn’t have. The speeches were delivered from a barrel standing in as a lectern. The cake was cut outside in the sun, with ice cream going round not long after. I didn’t ask for any of that to happen a certain way for me. My job was to already be in the right place when it did.

What it actually feels like to be filmed

Jen and Max aren’t especially outspoken people, and if you’d asked them beforehand, I don’t think either of them would have described themselves as naturally comfortable in front of a camera. It didn’t matter. It came through anyway, most of all during the speeches — the two of them visibly, easily happy, surrounded by people who clearly adore them. You don’t need to perform for a film like this to work. You just need to be there.

The moments that hold up best from their day aren’t posed at all. They’re the two of them laughing in a cloud of confetti, walking through the gardens looking like they were having the time of their lives — because they were, and I happened to be close enough to catch it.

You won’t be pulled in two directions

Photography was by Nook Photography, and this is the other worry I hear a lot: will having a photographer and a videographer both there mean being tugged between two people all day, doing everything twice? Jen and Max booked half-day coverage, so there genuinely wasn’t room for that even if we’d wanted it.

So we worked around the same moments instead of creating separate ones. Nook set the shape of the portraits, and I used what was already there — the light, the garden, the two of them together — to get movement and reaction for the film. Good suppliers build around each other. You shouldn’t have to manage either of them on your wedding day.

If this is your worry too

A few weeks earlier I filmed Shelley & Tom’s wedding at The WatersEdge, and they wanted almost the opposite of Jen and Max — quiet moments planned in with them in advance. Both films turned out just as personal. There isn’t one right way to be filmed on your wedding day, because there isn’t one right way to have a wedding.

If the idea of a wedding film appeals to you but the idea of being watched all day doesn’t, that’s not a contradiction, and it’s not an unusual thing to feel. It’s the exact balance I try to find on every wedding — enough planning that I know roughly where the important moments will be, and enough space around it that you never have to think about me finding them.

Joy over grandeur. Personality over perfection.