Brighton Town Hall winter wedding: Jodie & Gregg

A Brighton Town Hall ceremony with their children

We began at Brighton Town Hall, where the couple exchanged their vows with their two young children present. Having them there made the ceremony feel like a celebration of the whole family, not just the beginning of a new chapter for Jodie and Gregg.

There was something very lovely about beginning their marriage with their children right there beside them. That choice tells you so much about the day Jodie and Gregg wanted: a celebration rooted in the life they already shared. As their photographer, I wanted the children to belong in the story just as naturally as the vows and the portraits of the two of them.

Brighton Town Hall gave this first chapter a clear sense of place. Later we would be out beside the sea and then back among the familiar surroundings of home, but the ceremony was where it all began. I love that a Brighton wedding can hold these different parts of a couple’s life within the same day, without everything needing to happen at one venue.

Wedding portraits at Brighton Pier, the Bandstand and Hove

Afterwards, we jumped into a taxi for a little wedding-day tour of Brighton. We stopped at Brighton Pier, the Bandstand and the Hove beach huts, creating a varied collection of photographs in just 40 minutes. I loved bringing these recognisable seaside settings into their story without keeping them away from their celebrations for too long.

The seaside photographs were a little celebration of Brighton and Hove in their own right. The Pier, the Bandstand and the beach huts each gave us a different backdrop: recognisable places, but with Jodie and Gregg making them personal. Seen together, the pictures carry the story along the seafront rather than repeating the same portrait in a different spot.

Forty minutes gave us a useful pocket of time together. For a December wedding, I like to think carefully about where portraits sit within the available daylight, as well as how they fit around the celebrations. Jodie and Gregg’s route is a lovely example of the variety that Brighton wedding photography can offer within a short part of the day. Their family and their party still had plenty of the story left to themselves.

Home for drinks, then The Chimney House

Our next stop was somewhere much more personal: the couple’s home. There were drinks with their closest family and time to change before heading around the corner to The Chimney House.

Going home gave the afternoon a particularly personal chapter. Wedding photographs made in a couple’s own space carry a different kind of meaning from portraits at a landmark: this was somewhere that already belonged to Jodie and Gregg’s life together. Drinks with their closest family and a change of clothes created a natural pause between getting married and going out to celebrate.

Then their shared love of music took centre stage at The Chimney House. I loved that they were the ones behind the decks. It brought their personalities into the evening so clearly and gave the photographs a completely different rhythm from the ceremony and the seafront. Looking back through their day, those changes are what make it such a pleasure to tell: parents getting married, newlyweds out in Brighton, then a couple making their own music for the people they love.

This was where the day took on a completely different energy. Jodie and Gregg stepped behind the decks together, DJing at their own wedding before dancing the night away. From their children at the ceremony to their music filling the pub, this was a wedding that felt unmistakably theirs.