The Wedding of Sammie and George
Greetings once again from the flight deck, as mentioned in the last post Ines Telling of VIS-a-VIDEO is on a bit of a roll as far as filming “Winter Weddings” goes – with 3 weddings filmed and two more to go before the end of 2009 season.
There is no rest this winter, as we are already gearing up for 2010 with pantomimes at Crawley and the first wedding in February to film.
We had only just returned from filming a wedding at Notley Abbey, when it was “battle stations” once again – batteries to recharge, footage from the compact flash cards to transfer, wedding photographs to check for the blog, blogs and websites to get updated, Tom Tom to program – sometimes 24 hours is not enough hours in the day for the Award Winning Ines Telling.
This time VIS-a-VIDEO was heading deep into Suffolk to film the wedding of Sammie and George at the All Saints Church in Hitcham, followed by the wedding reception at another church – Wattisham Church right next to the military base. The RAF moved out in March 1993 and it is now the largest Army Air Corps airfield in the United Kingdom.
It was a very early start for the team, who were on the M25 heading towards Kent by 8 am and then through the Dartford tunnel to then pick up the A12 towards Bury St Edmunds. By 9:30 they were entering the sleepy village of Hitcham when it started to rain, as the film crew came around the corner they saw the most amazing rainbow over the village of Hitcham, screeching the car to a halt the Award Winning Wedding Videographer was out of the car with her Sony Z7 in hand filming the rainbow – by 10 am they had found the church.
With all the modern technology in the world, Google’s satellites still have not covered much of Suffolk as it took real team work to find the church – you could almost say Simon and Ines were a WRC rally team – but with almost military precision they found the church with time to spare to go film inside and outside of this lovely church before the heavens opened up.
Back in the car, the WRC team headed off to film the bridal preparations before driving back to the church to film the wedding ceremony – The lady priest who conducted the ceremony discussed wedding life like a box of ……no no a very large toblerone – by now the film crew had been up since 6 am and the chunky toblerone was looking more like brunch than an adaptation of wedding life.
After the ceremony the newlyweds literally ran out of the church to Blur song 2 – woo-hoooo!! – …… then it was a time for the young student wedding photographer to take a few shots before everyone jumped in the car to head off to the wedding reception. This was one occasion where there very nearly wasn’t a wedding photographer, he had only been hired as an afterthought two days before the wedding – and then only for a couple of hours on the day as the wedding video was deemed much more important. We like!!
The wedding reception venue was a rather quaint church no longer used for sermons but was now being run by Dave the farmer and his wife as a wedding venue – This church-come-new-wedding venue is located next to the well-known pheasant shoot run by Rushbrook and Son which attracts many people from across the country.
The weather had started to deteriorate and by late afternoon the marquee attached to the church was starting to leak added to the fact that the temperature had dropped a degree or two it was getting to get rather chilly filming in the marquee – I think due to these factors the wedding reception quickly filed into the church – wedding venue for the wedding breakfast or rather lovely piping hot fish and chips with the food wrapped in a newspaper article on the celebration of Sammie and George’s wedding – great change to the normal formal delivery of the wedding breakfast.
The bride and groom were due to have their first dance by 6 pm, however the band from Colchester never turned up till 6:45 and then still had to set up – so we ended up doing the first dance to a friend of theirs playing ‘Heartbeats’ by José González on his guitar, a very lovely moment.
Simon and Ines left Suffolk at 7 pm and where back home in sleepy Surrey by 8:30 for a glass of red wine and catch up with SCD ( Strictly Come Dancing ) … This weekend Ines is filming a wedding video at Cain Manor – a first for her – I will update you on the new adventure next week.