When a Wedding gets drenched in Rain

I always regarded myself as the good weather provider for weddings to the point that I was joking with my clients that hiring me ensures great weather on your special day. In fact I had only 2 weddings in over 8 years that had rain and only one that was rained out to the point that we could not leave cover without being drenched within seconds. So far a pretty good track record until I met Liz and Matthew.

Liz and Matthew got married in the beautiful Greenway Garden in Greenpoint on the Central Coast. This venue was a last minute change that Liz decided on. Maybe it was a nudge of intuition to change from the all outside venue in Ourimbah Campus to one with a sizable Chapel.

The morning was grey and when I arrived at Sails in Terrigal it started to rain. Not the usual drizzle, but real horrible rain with wind gusts and cold wetness all over the coast. However, this horrible weather did not dampen the mood of the Wedding Party who were having a ball.

As the photographer on the job, however, I had to do a bit of extra thinking as all the nice location shots that I had planned with the couple fell virtually in the water. Instead we had to do with what we could in and around the chapel of the gardens.

One image that couple definitely wanted was with them in front of the Bell Tree in the Garden. This shot was important because of their last name - Bell. It was impossible to shoot this on the day. We all would've been wet and miserable let alone the photo wouldn't have been nice at all.

Thanks to Photoshop, however, we can make the magic happen as you can see in the photo above. I went back the Monday after the wedding when the sun came out and took a photo of the Bell tree and transferred the couple from a different shot into the photo that was requested.

Same procedure with the next 2 photos of the lovely architrave also to be found in the garden and completely unreachable on the day.

   
So yet again Photoshop saved the day, but what can we learn from this experience? Always have a Plan B in place that ensures that you and your Guests are not swept away in Stormwater floods and have a second set of photo locations handy that will give enough photo opportunity and backdrops for us to use as wedding photos. In this case I was somewhat limited in what I could do on the day, but helped myself with some creative alternative.

Hope this helps you with your planning - Good Luck and dry Weather.  :)