I recently had the honour of shooting the Cape Weddings Bride of the Year 2008 competition held in Stellenbosh at La Pineta. It was a fantastic evening to say the least with a ‘Vegas’ theme. 10 gorgeous girls competed for the title. It really was such a pity that there could only be one winner, because quite honestly, they were all just awesome. And the spirit in which they took part was amazing. You’d think that 10 girls all in their wedding gowns would see the claws come out, but nothing could have been further from the truth. They helped each other with hair and make-up, drank champagne (and cocktails), joked, laughed and just had a whole lot of fun. Izandi from Cape Weddings also needs to be commended for putting it all together brilliantly. There were dancers, roulette and poker tables, good food and wine, and of course a packed house of family and friends all cheering and generally having a good time. So well done to Craig Ballantyne who heads up Cape Weddings for a fine evening. And if you haven’t ever visited the Cape Weddings site, I strongly suggest you do – it’s an excellent wedding site and you’ll find pretty much everything you need to make your wedding day a memorable one. Three cheers for Cape Weddings – hip, hip…

A bit of pampering...

Izandi from Cape Weddings gets the make-up treatment.

Now, where did I put my dress?

Craig Ballantyne, owner of Cape Weddings does his thing!

Walking the walk!

Place your bets please!

So… there we were. All ready for the big day. Focused. Motivated. Full of ideas. And what happens? Carla ends up in hospital the night before her wedding day! Nice. Really, really nice. The long and short of it is that she arrived an hour and a half late for the ceremony! But she still looked her brilliant best and sported a big beautiful smile. It showed a lot of character from this awesome couple to put it all together on the day. And that, they certainly did! Together with their friends and a bevvy of bridesmaids their wedding day at Edenheim was simply stunning.

These 3 shots of Yana were also completely un-posed. She was playing around at this old broken down cottage that I found on the grounds at Hazendal and then proceeded to give Patrick a bit of a pole-dance to the delight of the wedding party! I left her to do her thing and the result was  some really nice, natural photographs of her.

Patrick decided to take a seat and watch the rest of the show! And was I ever-so-happy that they chose me to be their wedding photographer! Yana’s impromptu dance was a fantastic way to start off the formal photographs and had everyone laughing and cheering (with the odd wolf whislte) in no time!

When it comes to just plain spontaneous photographs, this is one of my absolute favourites. I love it. It’s so fresh, so happy, so unpretentious.

Of course, as any 4-year old will tell you, it’s extremely important to announce to 140 awaiting guests that you have the bride in your safe care but need to go to the loo first!

Now that’s a reaction that says it all!

Does anyone actually have any idea how long 30 minutes can be  – especially when you have to sit quietly. Whoever invented this whole wedding thing must have been completely crazy.

For me, what really stood out at Rob and Nadia’s wedding was that they did things their way. And it all worked. Brilliantly. Rob wanted some posed shots of himself and his mates smoking cigars. I wasn’t completely convinced that posing the guys in a structured format would really work. I was dealing with a whole lot of Alpha males here for crying out loud! Posing them would just bring out a whole lot of testosterone and all I’d get was a bunch of guys pretending they were in some or other cigar commercial. So I kind of posed them very loosely and then we did some ‘guy talk.’ As we did so I walked around and shot them in smaller close-up groups. They weren’t even aware some of the shots were being taken. Bingo!

We took a drive around the farm stopping off at a petrol pump, a labyrinth, a machinery graveyard and lastly at the labourers cottages. The farm folk all came to say hi and spread a bit of cheer while Rob and Nadia hung up the washing!

Mofam is truly a splendid venue. There’s so much to see and explore. As we came to the end of our ‘formals’ we took a breather overlooking the water. Isn’t it just awesome?

I loved the recption at this wedding – there was plenty of food and flavour with great big heaps of Italian flair as the family got sung into serenading the beaming couple. It really was good stuff!  – a celebration to the end…

Want to see some more photographs from Rob and Nadia’s wedding? Then have a look at the short music video below. Hope you enjoy it.