York Wedding - Hannah & Dan Part 1 | Matt Thompson Photography

Family, Friends, a year of hardly seeing anyone and one of the best cities in England, York. Add them all together and what do you get? One of the best weddings I’ll ever photograph and ever will.

Little Sisters Wedding

I’ve known Hannah, well all my life because she is my little sister. Dan popped up about 5 years ago and after lots of guessing when or if he’ll ever propose, they finally got engaged in 2019. We should have then been celebrating their wedding in 2020, but covid put a stop to that so they rescheduled to 2021. Determined to get married they went ahead with reduced numbers and despite only having 30 guests, like most wedding’s that year, it was one of the best. Everyone was so happy just to be together and celebrate a marriage.

I of course wasn’t allowed to see Hannah in her wedding dress until they arrived at St Mary’s Church in Riccall, so I was with Dan and his two best men going for a drive in their 1950’s black Mustang that they had hired for the weekend. The sound of that thing was amazing by the way. Over with Hannah and her girls I had Nate Dainty on Second / Main photographer duties and from the amazing job that he did, it looked like it was a very casual and relaxed morning!

York Church Wedding

I’m not sure what was better, watching all the bridesmaids and bride’s ovaries explode when they saw my little boy turn up in his pageboy outfit or the vicar telling me he had no rules and I quote “couldn’t give a shit what we do”.
Anyone who knows my sister knows she doesn’t like to do things like everyone else, so instead of normal confetti, they had bubble guns for confetti and she loved walking through them so much, we did it twice, lol.

York Wedding Portraits

After the wedding ceremony, we headed over to Skipwith Common for some relaxed wedding photos. A perfect chance for them to get away from everyone and have some time to themselves, while I hid in bushes. It’s also where they go for a lot of walks and bike rides together so it meant quite a lot to them to have photos there.

Merchant Adventurers Hall

The wedding reception was at the stunningly old Merchant Adventurers Hall in York city centre, which I recently discovered used over 700 trees in the construction of the building. Built in the 1300s, the grade 1 listed building is now a museum.
Blakefields caterers did an amazing job keeping us all fed and watered with their outside bar, while Dan the groom tried his hand at Hoola hooping, although I think Hannah needs to give him a few more lessons because you are definitely not supposed to stick your arse out, haha.

Emotional Wedding Speeches

The speeches were super emotional, someone definitely put a chopped onion by one of the best men as he couldn’t stop crying! But emotion soon turned into a party and that’s when the rest of the wedding party were introduced into a drink that I was introduced to at the Stag Do, Gilb. Gin, Milk & Baileys. Usually drank out of your sweaty shoe, but the groom decided he liked this place so glasses had to do. And then of course came the Jeigermeisters, which seem to be a tradition when my wife and sister start drinking.
The day was perfectly topped off with everyone downing wine from the bottle so it didn’t go to waste.

It was great working with these guys: