Photographed the wedding of a brilliant couple, Aleisha and Ollie two people that were just great craic. All the locations were based around Galway City, starting in Ballybane for the bridal prep then onto the Claddagh Church for their wedding ceremony, stopping off in Salthill and then back to The Ardilaun Hotel for the dancing and celebrations.

Aleisha was great fun and still is I’m sure forgive the past tense. A natural person to be around which meant that she was easy to photograph, her personality comes across in the images. She trusted the process and the results speak for themselves a natural beauty. Ollie was also the same whilst maybe a natural beauty doesn’t apply here, he certainly was a handsome groom he trusted the process also and the two of them together was just magic fun and laughter all day.

Natalie O’Brien Bridal Hair and Ann-Marie Fahy were on hair and Makeup and looking after the girls superbly. Aleisha was and only daughter and it was a very proud day with her parents performing the roles of Father of The Bride and mother of The Bride with all the attention to detail than y bride could wish for. Hair and Makeup ran on schedule, which is always the case with the aforementioned girls, this allowed me some time to get some bridal portraits of Aleisha as well as capturing some of the more natural moments that occur on the morning of a wedding at the bridal prep. My aim is always to give an excellent cross section of imagery that encompasses different styles such as reportage documentary approach as well as straight up portraits. I would describe my style as eclectic that adapts to what is available to me at a given situation on a wedding day. The Claddagh Church is an iconic place to get married in Galway City, The Claddagh area is steeped in local history and is part of old Galway. The church itself is one of the best locations to photograph a wedding as it offers up quite a lot of available light as well as having a nice interior. After the ceremony and when family pictures were completed, we crossed the road to capture some bridal party pictures with the long walk as a background a very picturesque location and the place mentioned in the songs by Steve Earle and later by Ed Sheeran.

Afterwards we headed to Salthill Prom only a few minutes away another iconic Galway location, the weather was on our side all day, something that always must be taken into consideration on west coast of Ireland after all its not called The Wild Atlantic Way for nothing. Just before the Prom we stopped in a Salthill pub where Aleisha and Ollie had their first date as special place in their hearts and it also made for some great wedding pictures, even if I do say so myself.

 On Salthill Prom the sky was full of storm clouds, but no rain fell from the sky which meant that all I had to do was add pop of flash to achieve some great wedding images and in other cases I let the natural light do its thing as it was directional from camera right as I looked out at Galway Bay. 

Afterwards it was back to The Ardilaun Hotel where everyone received a great welcome myself included which is always nice. Into the evening It was time to capture some candid images of guests, speeches and then first dance. We even manged to get some night-time wedding images on the grounds of the hotel.

It was a pleasure to photograph the wedding of Aleisha and Ollie, their personalities fun attitude and cooperation was just brilliant.

Below are a small selection of images from their special day.

Good Times.

Michael.