The Christ the King Parish Church in Lockleys was the setting for Claire and Anthony’s wedding on a beautifully sunny day in early November. A traditional Catholic ceremony preceded a lunchtime reception at the beautiful Stangate house in Aldgate and I was honoured to be their wedding photographer for 3 hours 🙂

Christ the King Parish Church Wedding Ceremony

As I usually do I arrived far too early to the Church before even the doors were properly unlocked, allowing me to grab a few shots of Anthony running about putting the finishing touches on the Church before the congregation and Claire arrived. The open and empty space of the Church made for some lovely moody scenes of Anthony pacing about keeping himself busy 🙂

The Christ the King Parish church is a beautiful, modern church with a huge domed roof connecting to a large window letting light into the church at one end, and an impressive simplistic altar at the other. The wonderful thing about modern churches is that they often have walkways around the outside of the pews for us photographers and videographers to walk down without getting in anyone’s view of the ceremony!

Claire and Anthony’s ceremony took place at the beginning of the service, with vows and the first kiss occuring reasonably quickly, before conducting a Catholic mass where all the guests took part.

Stangate House Glamour Photos

It was a bit of a drive to Aldgate for Claire and Anthony’s reception at Stangate house, but I always love heading there for photos, the gardens are just beautiful and the setting is wonderfully intimate. The sun was beating down all afternoon, so I tried to stay in the shade most of the time, mitigating the sun’s hotspots on people’s faces and harsh shadows, but most of the time the sun streaming through the foliage is just a dream 🙂

Reception

As is often the case at a Stagrate house wedding, the reception was set upon the bottom tier of the tiered garden allowing for a picnic atmosphere where guests were able to mingle while playing lawn games and perhaps explore the heritage listed gardens and house. It’s a perfect family-oriented location with beautiful greenery all around.

Claire and Anthony opted to have a set of sit down tables for guests to sit at and enjoy the speeches and formalities that a wedding reception entails.

I’d like to thank Claire and Anthony for having me as their wedding photographer and I hope they enjoy their photos! 🙂