It is definitely one of our favourites and it was great to be back at Dalmunzie for the Wedding of Kate and Tyron.  Once again at Dalmunzie we were lucky enough to have a dry day – this meant that the romantic wedding ceremony and champagne reception could take place on the front lawn.

The bride chose a dusky pink figure hugging satin wedding dress and veil, with a vintage rose bouquet for herself and black figure hugging satin dresses for the two bridesmaids, who were also her Sisters. The style suited them beautifully as the Sisters were all blessed with the same fabulously slim genes! The groomsmen also wore matching vintage roses as their buttonholes.

The Groom, Tyron is South African and many of his friends and relatives travelled to Scotland for the wedding and with his Master of Ceremonies from Australia it made for some interesting and hilarious conversations throughout the day.

The food, as always at Dalmunzie, was absolutely amazing with Wild Mushroom Risotto, Venison, and Wild Berry desserts included in the wedding breakfast menu. Alan was even served up his own little slice of chocolate cake with a candle to mark his birthday courtesy of the Dalmunzie staff!

The evening entertainment began with the Dave Mackay Band  who we’ve heard before and they are brilliant. The dancing was in full swing by the time we left and everyone was having an absolute ball.

Once again a fantastic wedding again hosted by the wonderful Dalmunzie team.

Here are some of our favourite wedding photographs from the day – as usual the full wedding gallery can be found in the Clients area of our website.

Our eloping couple, Nicole and Brian, had travelled all the way from America to get married in Scotland.  They picked a perfect spot for the wedding, choosing one of Scotland’s finest Wedding Venues, Dalmunzie Castle in Glenshee, Perthshire.

As none of the couple’s family could come to Scotland for the wedding, it was vitally important to Nicole and Bran that they had excellent photographs that they could share with friends and family back home in the States.

My style of Wedding photography is primarily photojournalism based (and in Scotland I’m one of only a few photographers recognised by the Wedding Photojournalists Association).  However, I do work with our couples to create beautiful portraits from the wedding day as well, and we try to give these images our own special look with a bit of a fashion edge to them.

With this being my first elopement wedding, I was a little nervous, as without guests it would surely be harder to tell the story of the day with only the couple and the celebrant?  Fortunately, I had no problem documenting the day and it was a great honour to be part of such an intimate wedding ceremony.

After the ceremony Nicole and Brian took a walk through the beautiful Dalmunzie Estate where we spent some time capturing some wonderful portraits of just the two of them and the Scottish Highlands.

Once Nicole and Brian returned home and we shipped their photographs over to them I received a lovely thank you email:-

“Alan, I LOVE the photos!  I have gotten so many compliments.  I can’t believe how well they came out!  The colors and clarity are amazing.”

Weddings at Dalmunzie Castle are always a bit special.  But this one will stick with me for a long time to come.

Thank you Brian and Nicole for allowing me to be part of you very special day together.

Here are my own personal favourite images from the day:-

Friends and family back in the USA can of course view all the images in our Clients Gallery.

If you are planning your big day and looking to hire a Wedding Photographer in Scotland, please get in touch using the contact menu above. As keen travellers we are also available for Wedding Photography bookings (almost) anywhere in the World – just drop us a line for a quote.

Now when it comes to occupations, I think our Groom, Iain, easily beats anything I’ve came across before. You see, he’s an Olympic Bobsleigher. Skeleton class to be exact. Now that’s not something you’ll hear very often in conversation. The last time I’d photographed Jill and Iain was for their pre-wedding shoot  just over a year ago (again at Dalmunzie). At the time he was hoping to be selected for the New Zealand Winter Olympics Team.   Well it turns out he made it to Vancouver. However as any sensible person will tell you such sports are filled with potential pitfalls (and we all will sadly recall the dreadful accident during the Luge event). Even more so when you realise that Skeleton class Bobsleigh is the one where the rider basically careers downhill head first on what is essentially a large metal tray with runners. Unfortunately Iain had a rather spectacular crash and had to pull out after the second Heat.  Fortunately he only suffered concussion.  Boys and their sleds, eh? As well as an Olympic athlete (who formerly trained as a stunt man!), he’s also studying for a Phd in Nuclear Astrophysics - he even designed his own sled – hope that concussion didn’t damage too many of the brain cells Iain!  (Incidentally you will note that his Best Man and fellow Skeleton team member, Ben, has his own built-in safety padding for his head – although the rumour is that he only grows his hair that way so that he could claim to be the tallest athlete at the Games LOL).

Jill in the meantime is much more sensibly employed – although in a career also fraught with danger – she’s a Schoolteacher.  Icy bobsleigh run or a class packed with screaming kids – hmmm – let me think about that one?  She is however clearly a very determined young lady and was adamant she was going to be married outside on Dalmunzie’s lawn, despite the weather – which on that particular day was decidedly wet.  So after a consultation with the Registrar, it was agreed the ceremony would be held under the shelter of a large tree – but as luck would have it as soon as Jill stepped outside the rain stopped.  Result.  Their ceremony also included a traditional handfasting ritual where the couples’ hands are tied together to symbolise the bond of marriage.  At this point, being in amongst the trees, a number of wee flying scottish beasties decided to start eating the guests for lunch and one particularly large one even had the audacity to go for the Bride – where it landed right on her face during the vows – Jill however just smiled and ignored it until the vows were complete. What a trouper!

Now at this point, after all this testoterone-filled talk of Bobsleighs, Winter Olympics and Flying Beasties, my wife and wonderful photography assistant / second shooter, Morag, reminds me it would be a good time to to tell you that Jill was wearing a Suzanne Neville wedding dress - one of London’s finest couture wedding and evening wear designers.  Suzanne Neville wedding dresses have recently been worn by Kirsty Gallacher and Camilla Dallerup.  But I’m sure if any of them had a huge flying beastie land on them during their wedding vows they would have been running around and screaming like little girlies – not like our bride Jill, who showed her man that she too is full of Olympic spirit.

Here are my favourite wedding photographs from Jill and Iain’s Wedding Day – see if you can spot the flying beasties:-

Friends and Family can access the full set of wedding photographs in our online Client Gallery here.

Reading this blog and getting married yourself? Congratulations. Your wedding photographs are the most important photographs that you will probably ever have taken – so please take a look at our wedding portfolio and if you like what you see, let us know by clicking on the “Contact” menu above, or give us a call on 01259 210299 or 07887 835431. We undertake wedding commissions throughout Scotland and the North of England, often further afield including overseas. We’d love to hear from you.

P.S. Speaking of Bobsleigh’s, one of my favourite films is “Cool Runnings“, the comedic story of the Jamaican Bobsleigh team and their antics getting into the Winter Olympics, despite the obvious lack of snow in their home country.

P.P.S. I’m losing count of how many schoolteachers’ wedding I’ll be photographing this year.  Finally I might become the teacher’s pet.   I’m going to invest in more apples.

Our first of five June weddings saw us back up at one of our favourite wedding venues – Dalmunzie Castle, nestled high up in the Central Scottish Highlands of Perthshire, just a couple of miles South of the Glenshee Ski Resort area.

Breanna and her team at Dalmunzie had planned for the wedding ceremony to be held on the gorgeous lawn at the front of the hotel – and she was confident that the local weather wouldn’t let her down.   The day had started in glorious sunshine, but with every passing hour, the occasional little passing shower would make an appearance.  But as luck would have it, the rain stayed away for the ceremony and our photo session, before finally a thunderstorm made its appearance, to help create the cosy atmosphere for the evenings activities.

We had a fabulous day – Robin and Kath clearly enjoyed every minute of the day - Breanna and the Dalmunzie Castle Team once again showed why they have such a fabulous reputation as a wedding venue – and the wedding guests were a great fun crowd.

Congratulations Robin and Kath – here are some of my own personal favourite images from the day.

Family and Friends can view the full set of wedding images in our Clients Gallery – the password is Robin’s surname (all in lowercase).

Morag and I love to hear from visitors to our website, so please don’t be shy and feel free to leave your comments and feedback below.

Like what you see? Want to see more? – you can view our Wedding and Portrait Photography portfolio here

Looking for a Wedding Photographer? Or perhaps planning a special family portrait? We’d love to discuss your plans with you. You can contact us on 01259 210299 or 07887 835431 or use the Contact menu at the top of this web page.  We look forward to hearing from you.

P.S.  It was nice to spot that Dalmunzie Castle staff were using an image I took of the hotel last year as the Desktop Wallpaper on their office computer. Cool!

P.P.S. We’ll be making the trip back up to Dalmunzie Castle this coming weekend for another wedding and once again in August. Can’t wait.

You see although everyone’s idea of the perfect shooting conditions is a nice sunny day – it’s the cloudy days that can sometimes present the most creative opportunities.   And we do get a lot of cloudy conditions in Scotland, so we may as well use them to our advantage.

Such was the case for our latest pre-wedding photography shoot with Robin and Kath. The chosen location was Monifieth Beach on the River Tay, a few miles east of Dundee.   The weather was kind to us – it was dry and bright, although cloudy, but it was very cold, so we had to work fast.

So when presented with the lighting conditions (bright soft lighting on a bright sandy beach) we have a few options on the types of images we could do – after a brief discussion with Robin and Kath we decided to go for a moody skies look – we would darken the skies to make the clouds look much darker and use off-camera lighting to make the couple stand out from their environment.

For the photographs on the beach, we setup the camera to under-expose the beach scene (i.e. make the background appear a litter darker than it really was) – this gives us the moody skies. I then setup my flash unit (or speedlight as we photographers call them) on a light stand to one side of Robin and Kath. We then program the flash to provide the correct lighting on the couple and help separate them from the under-exposed scene and add some impact to the image.  (Are you following along now…).

The reason we set the flash up off-camera to one side is to give some shadow and depth to our handsome subjects, rather than have the very flat look you would get if the flash was mounted on the camera itself.

Here then are the results of the photoshoot – Both myself and Robin and Kath were very pleased with the results, and we got the exact mood we were looking for on the beach scenes.

Robin and Kath are due to get married in just a couple of weeks time up at one of my favourite wedding venues, (and one of Scotland’s finest), Dalmunzie Castle in Glenshee, Perthshire. You can read all about Dalmunzie in a review I did of the wedding venue last year.

This will be our first of two visits to Dalmunzie Castle this year and both Morag and I are very much looking forward to it.

Like what you see? Want to see more? You can view our portfolio here.

Interested in speaking to us about your Wedding Photography or Portrait requirements? We cover wedding and portrait commissions throughout Scotland (and even further afield if you are planning a wedding overseas).  You can contact us by using the “Contact” menu at the top of the page, or you can reach us on 01259 210299 or 07887 835431 or via email at weddings@alanhutchison.co.uk

We’d love to hear from you.

P.S. In the meantime, we’d be delighted if you would be kind enough to leave comments and feedback for us below, our couples always appreciate reading the many nice comments we get on the blog, so please don’t be shy!  And if you have any questions about any aspects of our wedding and portrait photography, even a technical question, please feel free to ask.

A couple of weeks ago on a delightfully sunny weekend I found myself up at the great wedding venue of Dalmunzie Castle in Glenshee, Perthshire to do a pre-wedding photoshoot with Ian and Jill.

Although I am based in Stirling, as a Wedding Photographer I market my services throughout the whole of Scotland, so it was not unusual to find myself in the Central Highlands of Scotland.

I will be photographing Ian and Jill’s wedding day at Dalmunzie Castle in July 2010 and this was an opportunity for all of us to get to know each other better and most importantly for them to assess my skills as their wedding photographer.

On a pre-wedding photoshoot such as this we’ll typically aim to capture around 10-15 great images that the couple can then use however they wish (many couples use them for save the date cards or frame their favourite image as a family keepsake) .

Ian and Jill were great fun to work with and in the end we presented them with around 25 images which we will use to create a fully customised Wedding Guest book (more about that in an upcoming post).  Family and friends can view the full collection of images in the clients area.

As Scottish wedding photographers we get to visit a lot of good wedding venues. Occasionally we also come across a special venue that can truly be identified as a “Great Scottish wedding venue”. One such place is Dalmunzie Castle in Glenshee, Perthshire.

I was fortunate enough to visit Dalmunzie Castle last weekend when doing a pre-wedding photoshoot for Jill and Iain who are getting married there next year (watch out for their photos appearing on the site in the next few days).

Dalmunzie dates back to 1510, and is a picture-postcard turreted mansion house. The venue is located in the Perthshire countryside, just outside the village of Spittal of Glenshee which lies a few miles north of Blairgowrie on the A93.

As locations go, this is truly a magnificent spot and it is apparently one of the highest hotels in the United Kingdom. Not surprising when you discover that the venue is just a few miles south of the famous Glenshee Ski resort area.

For the Bride looking to host a classic Scottish wedding, you would struggle to find a better place in terms of romantic location and character. The venue can cope with weddings from the smallest intimate affair, right up to parties of 70 people. The 17 bedroom hotel also offers ample space for the bridal party to unwind after an energetic ceilidh.

The wedding ceremony can be held at the nearby Kirk of Glenshee or at the hotel itself either in the Drawing Room or on the spacious front lawn.

The scottish castle boasts beautiful grounds that extend to 6500 acres and which include tennis courts, walking trails, and even a 9 hole golf course. Mountain bikes and four wheel drive estate tours can also be arranged.

The last thing that makes a wedding venue truly special is its customer service. In the brief time I was at Dalmunzie, the owner, Brianna Poole, made a special effort to say hello and her staff were very attentive. I also witnessed how Brianna and her staff attended to a previous day’s wedding party, and I was very impressed by their customer focus and attention to detail.

Lastly, as a wedding photographer the location offers a wonderful backdrop with lots of outdoor and indoor locations to work with.

So if you have yet to decide on your wedding venue, and are looking to experience a real Scottish Castle Wedding, why not give Brianna at Dalmunzie Castle a call. The hotel also has a lot to offer the overseas bride and groom who may be considering a Wedding in Scotland.

For further details on hosting your Wedding day at Dalmunzie Castle, you can visit www.dalmunzie.com