16:07

They had worked so hard for this moment.

Because the truth is just because it’s your wedding day, it doesn’t mean everything miraculously becomes simple, it doesn’t mean things just start becoming easy. If you’re a parent it doesn’t mean you stop. Wedding days are real life. Exhilarating, tense, wonderful, hard, beautiful life.

I could see it in Jodie and Darren, they were battling to experience their wedding day how they had envisaged it, how the wedding magazines, and the blogs describe it. But when you have 2 children aged 1 and 4, well before anything you are still a mum, you’re still a dad, and that job doesn’t ever stop.

A late start, a long journey between the ceremony in Essex and the reception in Whitstable, we were racing against the sun. At 16:07 it would be set.

16:03 we arrived at Whitstable, it was totally exhilarating, my head was pounding, I hadn’t drunk enough and it was starting to take its toll. But then we looked at the sky.

We had made it, I don’t know how, but we had made it. And everything had been worth it, for that moment.

As a parent you battle for these moments, between being mum and being dad.

As I was taking this photo I heard Jodie and Darren just say thank you to each other. Thank you for the life they had built together, thank you for the life they shared. It was the moment that they had fought so hard for all day and I was just so happy that they had got there.

Wedding days aren’t fairytales, they are real life, but when you think about it what could be more exhilarating, tense, wonderful, hard, beautiful than that.