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OK, something else interesting about the wedding fayre. Don’t think we saw any other gay couples there ((and not because we were too busy cruising the straight grooms)). All of the imagery on all of the stands was relentlessly heteronormative. There were very few mentions of civil partnerships at all. Don’t think any of the photographers had a same sex couple photo on their stands. I suppose it’s a bit of a numbers game – there are still enough customers out there who would be uncomfortable around photos like that, and fairly few people who would be actively attracted by it.

The Government passed a bill last year that means that all companies offering services to weddings pretty much have to offer them to gay couples, since you are not allowed to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. This is all well and good, but clearly we’d much rather work with – and spend our money on – companies that are happy to work with us than companies who are only doing so because they are legally obliged to.

So, anyway, as far as we can tall, all the people we spoke to this afternoon twigged exactly what sort of wedding it is that we want, and no-one had a problem or in any way reacted adversely. Which is nice.

Personally, we’re relentlessly appropriating all the words of “normal weddings” hence “getting engaged”, “husband” and so on. Civil Partnership doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, and “CP” – sounds rather too much like “seepy”. Urgh!

So today at the wedding fayre at Newstead Abbey.

Firstly Newstead Abbey is a lovely building – I’ve been there before and been bowled over by the gardens and the building and so on. Today has been brilliantly sunny all day, and this just made the place look extra special. There was free entry to the house and garden, and the various tables and stalls of the wedding fayre were spread around the many rooms of the tour of the building, so people going this weekend got the tour of the house for free as well as all the various wedding industry workers.

We have the brochure for weddings at Newstead, so we’d read about what was on offer. It was handy to see the actual rooms. (100 people? In here? Really?) But of course you can’t guarantee the sunshine for the event itself, so maybe the rooms won’t look so amazing on the day.

The Abbey has some interesting deals on unseasonal weddings – if you book a ceremony whilst the house is closed to the public for its winter season, you can get exclusive use of the building. The flip side is having your do from October to March. The building and grounds are owned by Nottingham City Council (bizarrely, given that they are miles outside the boundary of the city!) – this year’s tough budget has meant closing the building midweek. Which, they think, might open up opportunities for midweek weddings. Which sounded tempting til we remembered some of our teacher friends who just wouldn’t be able to come if we did that.

Plenty of the things that were there we could rule out straightaway: ladies’ fancy under-garments. Dresses of any sort, including the pointless and pricey chair-dresses, for people who like wasting money and don’t like folding chairs. We’ve pretty much ruled out having fancy cars (but have no idea on how we’d get there and whether we’d travel separately). Some of the things looked really tempting: giant chocolate fountain, for starters…

Got into a long conversation with one particular photography company who I really seemed to click with. Their display photos really popped out at me, and the person on their table was really nice, and we had a great conversation with her. I walked away saying “well, if nothing else, we’ve chosen the photographer…” To be honest, it was probably the fact that somehow the conversation strayed into blogging and twitter… We never actually talked prices, but they gave us a goody bag to take away, and feeling like a decision had been made, we didn’t talk to any of the other photographers. When just now I checked the prices, I was a little surprised at how high they were, but since we hadn’t spoken to anyone else I can’t tell whether they’re normal or pricey.

Since getting home, I’ve found their blog, website and twitter account, and there are more really good pictures – and in other styles too, not just weddings.

One of the things that I really liked about their portfolio were some absolutely cracking candid shots. I’m a big fan of candids at weddings, and have spent some of my time at friends’ weddings toting my big camera and taking pictures myself. I tend to figure that enough people are taking photos of the happy couple, so I concentrate on getting candid shots of other guests, and over the years, have had some lovely captures. Here’s a few: