Wedding wars! How photographers took over – and vicars fought back

Hiking to the top of the highest local peak in full wedding dress sounded dramatic, adventurous and romantic. A visual representation of feeling on top of the world; a jaunty juxtaposition between gorgeous wedding finery and the wilds of northern England. The resulting photographs were striking and memorable, recalls the photographer behind this scenario, Scott Johnson. The couple were lovely and it was one of his favourite jobs – but he wonders how their guests felt, having been left for two hours while they went off to hike up a hill. “You’re invited by the bride and groom to spend a day with them and they disappear, so I can see where the angst comes from,” he says. “But it’s what the couple wants, so we have to say yes.”

Johnson, in his 40s, says he is old enough to remember when his wedding photography jobs lasted around three hours – he was there to capture the arrival at the church or register office, shoot the ceremony and take portraits and photographs for an hour or so afterwards. “You didn’t do any bridal preparation, or stay for the party.” Now, he says, couples want coverage from early in the morning until midnight or later. “I used to just take one camera and one lens,” he adds; now he brings a van of equipment. “Couples are much more aware of what can be done than ever before.” And, anecdotally at least, many couples want much more. “Some want the more stylised coverage,” he says. “You see wedding photography online where you’re thinking, that’s not a wedding, it’s like a movie shoot.”

Some couples now want to be photographed on beaches at sunset, or clifftops, or up mountains. They want drones and multiple angles, and they employ “content creators” alongside the more traditional photographer. Wedding photographers are often working 16-hour days, barely stopping for a break, and under pressure to capture every detail. Then many couples want to see a preview of the photographs the next day. “There’s less patience, there’s less appreciation of quality,” says Lewis Fackrell, a wedding photographer based in south Wales.

That’s not their only problem. Earlier this year, Rachel Roberts, a wedding photographer, complained that vicars were making their jobs harder by restricting the type of photographs they could take in church, and in some cases banning them altogether. The petition she started, calling for a better working relationship and describing “rude, humiliating, aggressive and abusive” behaviour from some clergy members, has been signed by more than 1,200 people. It included a link to a TikTok video of one such incident, in which a priest stops mid-ceremony to tell the photographers to move away. “This is a solemn assembly, not a photography session,” he says firmly, as bride and groom look on nervously. Even Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, stepped in, agreeing that some vicars can be “overcontrolling”, but adding that a church wedding “isn’t staged just as a spectacle to be filmed, but as a personal encounter of a couple with God”.

Most of the church leaders Roberts has worked with have been “absolutely amazing”, she says, but she has still had “a good handful of experiences where I’ve been banished to the back, or told to hide behind a pillar. One vicar mapped out a square on the floor, where I really couldn’t see anything, [and said] ‘Don’t stray from there’.”

Although her petition got a lot of attention, not much has changed, she says. “Unfortunately, the only way change is going to happen is more fresh blood coming into the church. Those who have these rules are not going to be changed overnight. The only thing that’s changed is more couples have an awareness, and they can check before their wedding.”

There can be pressure to capture everything in detail, but Roberts thinks this doesn’t necessarily mean more intrusive photography. “Technology means we can have silent shutter mode on, we’ve got zoom lenses, we can be way more discreet, and quiet and respectful.”

Many wedding photographers blame social media for fuelling unrealistic expectations, and escalating the photography to the point where it threatens to take over the entire day. “It has really changed the landscape for good and bad,” says Fackrell. “It’s influential but also detrimental.”

Instagram accounts such as Vogue Weddings, which features stylish, beautiful, usually rich and often famous couples, have become hugely influential. Fackrell has noticed more people wanting pictures like those of the self-taught photographer German Larkin, who shot the wedding of Brooklyn Beckham, among other celebrities and socialites; his recognisable style is flash-heavy and glamorous. “I am a fashion photographer and I see wedding photography as fashion shots,” Larkin told the New York Times. It means, says Fackrell, that other photographers are “pivoting within a few weddings and changing their style, just to try to keep up with the trends”. The growing fashion for film photography, as opposed to digital, has also had photographers heading back to the darkroom to brush up their processing skills, or learning them from scratch.

Instagram can give couples unrealistic expectations of what can be done on a busy day, Fackrell says. “There are a lot of photographers now [on social media] that are doing styled shoots, with a model couple, with all the time in the world to set it up. With a wedding it’s impossible to do that because it is a natural event that flows. You can’t say: ‘Sorry, can you walk back down the aisle again, because you weren’t smiling?’ And social media is flooded with AI-generated images, and particularly wedding photography images. To the naked eye, the public is not going to notice.” Expectations, he says, “need to be reined in a little bit, but it’s all about communication”. He has had couples come to him with shots they want to emulate and he has had to point out, he says, “that wedding was in a different country, with a different backdrop, in a different season”.

Hannah Warmisham, a wedding photographer based in Gloucestershire, has sympathy for newly engaged couples being overwhelmed with images of all the ways their wedding could look. “You’re seeing all these amazing things [that are] part of people’s day, you’re not seeing the whole day. So you might see someone on a rooftop in New York with a million dollars’ worth of florals all around them and think: ‘Oh, I want that.’ Or you see people on top of mountains. I think it is quite hard to keep a level head.”

There is increased pressure on photographers, too. At the last wedding Warmisham photographed, she started shooting at 10.30am and didn’t even stop for a drink until after 4pm. “I didn’t put my camera down, there was stuff that needed to be covered during that entire period.” One modern trend is for “first look” shots – where the couple see each other, dressed up, before the ceremony. “It’s lovely but sometimes high pressure because it’s only going to happen once and is often very quick.” Warmisham has to decide in advance whose expression will be best and which to focus on – it’s not the sort of shot you can take again.

It’s the same with the ceremony. “I have heard of couples going to kiss after they just got married and a videographer shouting: ‘No, not yet.’ That’s a really special moment you won’t get back. I personally wouldn’t do that.” She tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, but understands the importance couples place on having images from the whole day. “It’s part of the documentation, and these are memories that you’re going to be showing your grandkids one day.”

For many couples, though, it’s also about getting images on social media as soon as possible. Around nine months ago, Angela Hughes, a photographer and film-maker based in Dorset, did her first wedding alongside “wedding content creators” – a team wielding iPhones, whom the couple wanted to prioritise over Hughes’s photography. “They were really lovely, but I wasn’t used to dealing with content creators,” she says. Sometimes it made her job harder. “[One of them] was taking the lead for certain shots, like moments with the couple. If she wanted to go in front of me, I had to let her. At one point she followed the bride halfway down the aisle. I think a lot of the time, these content creators are more invasive because they’ve been asked to be.” Another photographer recently shot a wedding for a couple who also had a videographer and two content creators, and described it as “a bunfight”. One of the content creators missed getting footage of the father of the bride’s “first look” at his daughter, and asked him to recreate it later in the day, without his daughter even being there. “They told him to look surprised.”

With Hughes’s work, it can take days and often weeks to perfect the photographs – choosing which of the 3,000 or more images to keep, then editing them using Photoshop. A video can take two or three weeks to put together. By contrast, content creators can upload raw footage on to social media almost immediately, she says. “On one hand, it’s really fast. On the other hand, I would be worried about the quality, but people seem to be loving it so we have to accept it as a new part of the business.” Hughes, who makes films and has a master’s degree in the art, says: “I’m very much against going down in quality,” but she worries, with a laugh, that it makes her seem old-fashioned. “I really think there is a massive shift, in that weddings have to be more aesthetically pleasing. As a film-maker, I can get on board with that.”

In the growing trend for micro weddings, or “elopements” – where there are few guests or sometimes none at all – the photography can take on an even bigger significance. “Your friends and family are only going to experience the day from the photographs,” says Alina Pullen, a London-based wedding photographer.

Sometimes it’s just her and the couple. “A photographer becomes way more than just the photographer,” she says. “I don’t consider myself just someone who comes in on the day and observes from afar.” She is often there from the start to help a couple to plan their elopement, with extensive meetings to talk about their interests and what kind of day would suit them. On the day, she says, “it’s not a photoshoot, it’s not a styled thing where people are static; it’s all in motion, it’s all happening”. One of her favourite weddings – a symbolic, rather than legal marriage – was last summer in a lavender field, where the couple went for a walk and had a picnic, then said their vows at sunset. “And then we walked back through the fields capturing more of a twilight look as well. So that was a whole day of an intimate experience, with the two people just by themselves.” She is booked for a sunset beach wedding and treehouse ceremony next year, but she says an elopement doesn’t necessarily have to be in a dramatic or remote location. Last week, she shot a couple, their maid of honour and best man, in a city wedding in London. “A lot of couples just want to do something in the city that they love.”

In the last year, Mark Niemierko, a sought-after wedding planner, has started sending quick links of photographers’ work to couples before they start to talk more seriously about it, “because I find that it’s something they’re becoming more and more fussy about”. He understands the importance of great wedding photography. “It is the one thing that you will have for ever. A video can date, while I could look at my grandparents who got married in the 1940s, and it’s classic and chic and will always stand the test of time.” But he also adds: “Instagram has a lot to answer for. I feel like Instagram is about massive peer pressure now … they all want the same thing. Instagram makes people think they’re having something unique, but it’s not.”

When couples ask him to essentially set up a photoshoot on their wedding day, which means they’ll be away from their guests for a couple of hours, he is quite strict with them. “I’ve got photos framed from all my weddings in my office, and they’re all spontaneous, they’re not from where they’ve gone off to do a shoot,” he says. He would love to see the whole thing pared back – and that includes enormous photographers’ fees. “Wedding photographers have lost their grip on reality,” he says. “We are getting quotes that are £1,000 an hour.” The most expensive charge up to £20,000 for the day. “I’m not discrediting wedding photographers, some are incredible and they’re really awesome people that we work with, but I think some photographers have allowed Instagram to make this bigger than it is. And it’s costing more.”

Ultimately, he says, it’s about getting to the heart of what’s important – something he says many couples lose sight of in the overwhelming wedding whirlwind. “Sometimes I’ve got to remind them that it’s a celebration. There’s a load of tradition around it but it’s about celebration and bringing people together and looking after your guests, and not turning it into a photoshoot.”

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