Skip to content "Brandon is a fellow Wakefield native who fell in love and moved to Halifax to be with Charlotte. They met playing rugby union with her brother. Some love stories you just want to photograph properly."
Mr and Mrs Conway's Halifax wedding was a special one for me for a few reasons. There's the Wakefield connection, there's the rugby story, and then there's the setting: an autumn wedding in the countryside around Halifax, when the valley does its best work of the year. We'd already had a cold February morning together on their pre-wedding shoot at Newmillerdam, so by the wedding we were old hands.
The service at Halifax Minster gave the day its weight — centuries of stone and glass, and the kind of light a photographer waits for. From there the day moved out of town and into the hills.
The reception was held at a private residence in the Shibden Valley — Gentleman Jack country, all dry-stone walls and October colour. A home celebration gives a photographer something no venue can: a day shaped entirely around the couple, with nothing borrowed and nothing staged.
If Shibden's hills are your kind of backdrop, have a look at a wedding at Shibden Hall itself — the house the valley is named for.
"Autumn in the Shibden Valley is the cheapest upgrade in Yorkshire weddings. The hills do the decorating, and all I have to do is be stood in the right place."
The suppliers who made it happen: bridal boutique The Harrogate Wedding Lounge, veil by Helen Martin Veils, dress by Caroline Castigliano, who chose Charlotte as her Christmas Eve Bride 2020 and featured six of these photographs on her Instagram.
Marrying in Halifax or the Calder Valley? I photograph weddings across West Yorkshire — from town halls to hillside marquees — with no travel charge anywhere in Yorkshire.
Brandon & Charlotte in Halifax
