Beamish Wedding Photography Review from Cathy and Dave

CATHY AND HER BEAUTIFUL WEDDING GOWN AND BOUQUET AT BEAMISH PARK HOTEL

Cathy and David were a great couple to work with on their wedding day, starting out at Beamish Park Hotel, before heading over to St Mary's Church Ponteland and then heading back to Beamish park Hotel for their wedding breakfast with their closest family and friends.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to BLOG about this wedding as I usually do, for security purposes.

That happens a few times a year, but I have been given special permission to use one image which doesn't identify my lovely couple to go with this review of their time spent with me.

".... When we first started looking for wedding photographers, we realised it wasn’t going to be easy.

All the websites of the photographers we stumbled across showed photograph upon photograph of formal, cheesy poses, brides and grooms peeping out from behind trees or set up ‘wacky’ faces from the bridal party.

Not exactly photos you’d want to have on your living room wall for years to come... 

In a moment of frustration, I think I typed something like ‘relaxed wedding photography, no cheesy poses’ into Google and Hey Presto, Dirk’s name came up!

From our first meeting, we knew we weren’t going to have to look anywhere else for our wedding photography.
Dirk knew exactly what we wanted, but answered all our questions, and he was even happy to meet the parents before the big day. Even though he encouraged us to look around and make sure we were happy with our choice, we didn’t bother, knowing that Dirk would do the job exactly as we wanted.
And Dirk didn’t disappoint!
Despite the torrential rain on our pre-wedding shoot, we had a fun and relaxed afternoon in Durham a few weeks before our wedding, and he settled all nerves by ensuring he stayed in contact right up until the big day.
I was so excited to get a text from him saying ‘I’m on site, will be there in a second!’ on the morning of our wedding, knowing that he would get some lovely shots right from when he arrived!
I’d read reviews on Dirk’s website about how well he fits in on the wedding day and sure enough, every single guest we spoke to after the wedding commented on him.
Everyone said what a lovely bloke he was – one guest even said ‘that was the only wedding photographer I’ve seen who I’ve actually liked – I usually want to punch them by the end of the day after they have made the guests wait around for three hours before herding them into some ridiculous formal pose’.
Dirk was the opposite – the group shots were taken in about a minute and every single person is smiling from ear to ear!
Dirk was with us from 11 until around 9 on the day of the wedding, and he was hard at work for every single second. He even became like a third bridesmaid (minus the dress…), helping me with flowers and gifts when I was looking a little overwhelmed!
He took us away during the lull before the disco for a maximum of five minutes to get some photographs of the two of us alone – nobody even noticed we had gone and they turned out to be some of our favourite pictures!
Because of our jobs, we had asked Dirk if he wouldn’t mind leaving our photographs off Facebook and his BLOG, and we were very grateful to him for respecting our wishes.
Our photographs were ready for viewing less than a week after the wedding, and a gorgeous box with over 600 photographs was waiting for us on our return from honeymoon.
We love every single picture as they are so relaxed and everyone looks so happy – the photographs really tell the story of the day and we’ve looked at them over and over again since the wedding.
Thank you, Dirk – we couldn’t have picked a better wedding photographer!
DIRK VAN DER WERFF