Just some of the positions you can get in to...

...when filming a wedding!

Saturday was Sarah and Dave's wedding day and the service was held at St Mary's Church in Penwortham. As usual we were made to feel most welcome by the vicar, Chris Nelson. The weather was dry although slightly overcast but everyone breathed a sigh of relief that the rain held off...especially after some of the downpours we have had these last few weeks.


Whilst filming though, I was spotted (by Julie with camera!) lurking amongst the bushes...




...and then crouching on the floor.




However, I did take up some of the more usual positions as well... although it seems Julie managed to get herself amongst the bushes for this one!

The most precarious positions though where at Barton Grange Hotel which is where Sarah and Dave had their reception...


to begin with I climbed on the wall as one of the cars drew up...





and then a bit later climbed onto the roof (with camera) to get the group photo being taken. All was going well until Rob (from Barton Grange) decided to sneak up behind me...

...to say I jumped would be an understatement! You'll notice on the photo though that Rob has made a hasty retreat...I wonder why!


That said however, Rob and Tom did look after us (as always) and kept me informed on what was happening when...which is much appreciated, as it makes my job a bit easier.

The final shot Julie managed to squeeze in was of Rob 'striking the gong' to get everyones attention...if you are thinking of booking Barton Grange then I would highly recommend that you book Rob as well as he really does make the day proceed smoothly. On the day though, he did rib Tom as he had just managed to get himself (at great expense!) some tickets to watch Burnley play Shefield United in the playoffs at Wembley...given that a lot of the guests were Wolves fans, this was found to be quite amusing. Although, I guess in the end Tom has had the last laugh, given that Burnley won and gained promotion...even managed to do me out of a job! I had been booked not once, but twice in anticipation of Shefield winning to go and provide a camera feed for their celebrations...they perhaps should have learnt the first time round...not to jump the gun. Oh well, there is always next year!

Unusual wedding venues...and blogs

I was reading the BBC blog dot.life the other day and a piece on Bletchley Park. It was discussing the effect celebrities can have when they champion good causes. We only have to look at the effect Joanna Lumley has had with the Gurkha's (and all credit it to her...someone needs to!) and how it can really raise the profile of a cause when a celebrity gets involved.

Well, Bletchley Park was hoping for a similar effect with Stephen Fry as they need to raise a ton of money to try and preserve the huts where thousands worked during the war trying to crack codes. I must admit my initial thoughts were 'how on earth do we let places like this get in such a state...we (the country) only seem to react when something is about to fall down..why?' It was interesting to read though, that when Stephen turned up at Bletchley to be given a guided tour there was a 'Twitter' there who immediately Twittered that Stephen Fry was at Bletchley and the place was then inundated with visitors...interesting the power of Twitter and blogs in general.

Any way back to my blog theme...whilst looking at the Bletchley Park website I noticed that they also did weddings. That got me thinking about unusual wedding venues...what are the most unique? I found a site whilst surfing the net that lists many of the venues with civil licences but wondered what peoples experiences where of unique venues.

For us, I guess it has to be Blackpool Tower...although strictly speaking we weren't filming it as a wedding day film. It was actually for the news and we had been commissioned by the PR company that works for Blackpool Tower. I mentioned this in our very first blog back in January. Generally though most people seem to go for the tried and tested venues...the next few weeks sees us at Barton Grange, Farington Lodge and Stanley House to name but a few.