I have known Colleen for the best part of 22 years so when I learned that she was getting married I offered to shoot the day as a gift to them. They were chuffed but unfortunately earlier that day they had selected another photographer and paid their deposit.

I had intended to go to the ceremony without my camera but on the night before got a call from another friend who told me she was putting together a scrapbook of photos from the day and would I please take some for it.

As I had no desire to be an “Uncle Bob” I actually contacted the official photographers and told them what I was doing.

The wedding was to be held on Eastbourne beach (which has pebbles rather than sand). Despite earlier forecasts to the contrary the day ended up brilliantly fine, which was great for the wedding but not so great for the photos.

The first announcement of the day was a request to not post any images on Facebook until after the Bride & Groom has released official ones. That was fine with me as I figured it would mean that there was no rush on getting images out.

I ended up taking around 150 images in total which were whittled down to an initial selection of 109 that I thought were worth taking further. Then on Monday I got a phone call from the Brides mother telling me that they wanted to release some images to Facebook and could I send some over to them. No problem I said.