If you’ve never been to Val de Vie Polo and Wine Estate in Franschhoek, you really should go. I see a lot of venues week in and week out and believe me here, I expressed myself in some fairly eloquent language (accompanied by a low, long whistle) when I saw this place. It’s bloody outstanding. It’s one of those ‘how the other half live’ kind of venues. Be-bloody-eutiful. They have a lawn I’d give my wife and kids away for – and they have the cheek to play polo on the thing! Eish! Anyway, the reason I was there was to shoot the prestigious SA Weddings Bride of the Year 2009 – in association with Live Out Loud magazine. Now listen, take my exceptional advice here – if you’re getting married and you’ve never been to www.saweddings.co.za, you need to get yourself over there. These guys run (in my humble opinion), the finest, most honed, ship-shape wedding site in South Africa. If you need anything ‘wedding,’ it’s there. So now you know. Okay, time for a quick commercial break…

I’ve just started a fan page on Facebook under Warren Williams Photography. Click here to join. I’ll update it regularly with promotions and competitions I’m running, articles I’ve written, shoots I’m doing or have done and so on. Join it and you’ll get a head start on some good advice and some awesome competitions here and there. I know, I come up with the ideas – and there is going to be some good stuff coming your way in 2010.

Good, commercial break over, now onto the fine stuff.

Here’s the lowdown on what turned out to be an awesome Bride of the Year 2010 event…

One of the perks to being a wedding photographer is that you get to see some fantastic venues. But even better, you get to hang with some seriously pretty girls on a day when they are perhaps looking the best they will ever look! On the 13th Feb, I had 12 such girls. Hell, I’m glad Accountancy was never my thing.

Um ja, being a makeup artist in a room full of girls trying to all prepare for an awards ceremony where the prizes are relatively to extremely significant has got to age you. But the makeup artists pulled it off without so much as breaking into even a minor sweat. Nice work girls.

So while the girls were doing their hair and makeup thing downstairs, 200 family & friends, 50 media VIP’s and a good dose of celebs were out on the hectically long verandah siping champagne, tucking into bloody delicious looking picnic hampers (no I didn’t have any, I was too busy shooting – downside to job) and watching grown men and women on horses chasing a small white ball around the garden. All this while a choir sang in the background. Not too shabby I tell you.

Okay, so the girls are ready, dressed and good for go and what do Val de Vie roll out? The Rolls Royce chaps. Two of them. Nice touch. So our brides bundle themselves in, throw the obligatory wave and disappear around the corner to be delivered in front of the main pavilion for want of a better word. I hope by this stage you’re getting the picture – picnics, choir, horse polo, champagne, cocktails, a lot of beautiful people dressed for a day at the races and now here come 12 brides in a couple of Roll R’s.  Everyone’s cool, calm and relaxed except for me as I race backwards and forwards trying to dice myself into 12 different pieces to catch each bride. I’m pushing serious beads and everyone else is having fun and swapping war stories with our celebs. Something is wrong here.

Now the problem with shooting these kind of events is that one often has to rub shoulders with those a little more high profile and hence famous than oneself (and at the same time be nice to them and feed them peanuts). Which isn’t a problem when it’s the likes of  Mr Mark Palmer you’re dealing with. Mark is my kind of comedian. Clean, darned funny, quick, sharp as a razor blade, and, and and… Yes, this is an official punt to let you know that Mark is indeed your go-to-guy when it comes to doing the MC thing (and no, he’s not paying me for this but I’ll invoice him anyway and see what happens).The better looking fellow next to him is our very own Cape Town partyman Richard Hardiman from 94.5 KFM.

Okay, while we’re on the subject, here are our fine judges. From left to right we have: Morgan Newman. At around 91 kilos and measuring 1.79metres, you don’t want to run into Morgan when he’s in a bad mood and wearing an Emerging Springbok rugby jersey. You WILL end up in hospital. Andries Vermeulen. You know how sometimes when you’re singing, someone who cares about you will say:  ‘don’t give up your day job.’ Well nobody said that to Andries – watch this space. Izandi van Wyk. The great girl from saweddings who makes it all come alive on the night! Michelle McLean. Ag no, it’s actually ridiculous just how beautiful this woman is. Really. I touched her. On the arm. I rock. I think Michelle would like it if you clicked on her name and visited the page the link takes you to. Karla Oettler. Planning a wedding is an incredibly easy thing. It’s a no brainer. Until you try. Karla is the person you turn to when you want your wedding to absolutely fly! She’ll make sure your wedding day is the one day that lives with you forever. Give her a call. Now. Do it.

So back to the story at hand. All our guests plonk themselves down on chairs and couches and bar stools and um, poofs and so on and the show starts with a pretty snappy fashion show courtesy of Cavendish Square (where coincidentally I used to drop fire crackers onto peoples heads from the top floor when I was a kid). And just in case you wondered, yes, some people did get much bigger frights than others.

And then, it was onto the main event as our 2009 finalists walked the walk, talked the talk, and pretended desperately hard not to be nervous…

Mark Palmer proposing to 12 brides at the same time. Collector’s Edition. 1 of 1.

(By the way, Mark’s wife Monya, won Bride of the Year last year.)

Ah, keeping it all in the family I see.

And the winner, the champion of champions, the bride of brides for 2009 went to Stephanie Pogenpoel! No actually it went to Miss November, Analita Quintal Farelo, but Stephanie Pogenpoel is a lot easier to say quickly. Go on, try saying Analita Quintal Farelo in a hurry. This gorgeous shining light of a girl walked away bloody happy I can tell you that much. Her prizes included a luxury second honeymoon to the value of a cool 70 000 bucks. Not bad for an evening’s work.

The winners with SA Weddings ‘Big Cheese,’ the very amiable Mr Craig Ballantyne. Craig, you have a lot to be proud of, great work all round!

Analita and our very own marvy Miss Universe, Michelle McLean.

Without these 2 girls it would have been a fairly quiet evening at home with the dog, cat and goldfish. Izandi from SA Weddings (good chick all round) and Simone, General Manager Marketing and Events at Val de Vie (ditto).

Okay so that’s the SA Weddings Bride of the Year done and dusted successfully for the year. But how’s this – the 2010 competition is now the first to be open to the whole of South Africa! So if you’re getting married this year, three things are incredibly important. Firstly you need to book me as your wedding photographer. Secondly we need to enter you into the 2010 Bride of the Year. Thirdly, you need to win it. Game on, let’s do this thing!