Getting Married? It’s About Time!
Ian Reynolds meets Gary and Fiona Jamieson, and baby Megan and wonders ‘why did it take you so long?
‘We didn’t have a Wedding Coordinator, we had John Brandwood.’ That’s quite an endorsement as it stands, but when I tell you that Gary Jamieson began his wedding day speech with that ringing endorsement, you can assume that The Happy Couple were well pleased with the service they had received. It wasn’t a knee-jerk gesture in respect of John’s contribution on the Special Day, either.
‘We thought of it in advance’, Gary says. Which is a bewildering thing to say, on the face of it: I mean, how many people rave about their photographer before they’ve seen the fruits of his darkroom? ‘Oh, he’s much more than a photographer’ Gary adds, reading my mind. Fiona picks up the story.
‘We wanted a Christmas wedding at The Inn at Whitewell’, she says, (and there’s nothing impulsive about that given that you need to book at least 18 months in advance). ‘We couldn’t get into the Inn until 2.30, so everything had to be timed to hit that target. I don’t know where we would have been without John.’
‘He must have done hundreds of weddings’ Gary continues, ‘whereas I hope I’ll only ever have one! And I think it’s that knowledge of how long things really take that made John invaluable to us.’
Fiona met John at a Bridal Fair in Manchester and reported enthusiastically to Gary that she’d found the ideal photographer. ‘I loved his pictures’ Fiona says ‘and he was offering the same service as another photographer we looked at who was charging almost double.’
‘Not that we decided on price alone’ Gary insists, ‘to be honest, there was a sort of warmth about John that we responded to and we thought that having him around on our wedding day would be fun. He felt almost like a part of the family by the time we’d said ‘I do’.’
But it wasn’t until that task of planning the day’s events was at hand that the couple realised that they’d discovered a gem. ‘It wasn’t just the timings’, Gary remembers. ‘He got us to consider things that we just wouldn’t have thought of. He reminded us that although we’d have photographs, there would be no record of the actual speeches. As I say, that never crossed my mind but we’re both so pleased that we hired the videographer John recommended.’
After a honeymoon enigmatically split between Killington Lake (in Northumberland, brr) and New York, John duly delivered a stack of prints, advising the couple to ‘take their time’ in choosing the shots that would be immortalised in their album. They took him at his word. Gary’s almost too embarrassed to admit that it took ‘two and a half years to get around to it.’
No problem for John. After all, his is not the kind of work that is ever thrown away. ‘The photos are being printed now’ he says sheepishly.
As our time comes to an end, eight-month-old Megan takes her place on Daddy’s lap, prompting a final plea of mitigation. ‘It’s not as though we’ve not been busy!’
Which is altogether too much information.