This picture was taken at Carly and Alex’s Whitstable Lobster Shack wedding.
What better way to end a laid back seaside wedding than with fish and chips on the beach?
I love this shot for it’s ordinariness. Guests queue up outside a very ordinary van, the fish and chips is served in boxes decorated with news print, there’s ketchup if you want it (and, I hope, tartar sauce and mushy peas just out of shot). Add salt and vinegar (lots and lots of vinegar) to taste.
Ordinariness is something I look for in a lot of my wedding photography images. I love it when a wedding day is anchored in real life. Whether that’s through images of people getting ready at home, surrounded by objects from their day to day lives, or whether it’s elements of the ordinary creeping in from outside, like bustling city streets or fish and chip vans.
With this image in particular I love that it’s not obvious that it’s a picture from a wedding. It’s just a lady putting some vinegar on her fish and chips. I like the contrast too. I was experimenting with shooting with my flash on camera a bit last summer and I’m still drawn to hard light and high contrast images.
Fish and chips is an institution – in many towns across the UK you still see Friday night queues outside of the chippy – and it was the perfect evening food for a seaside wedding at the Lobster Shack. Guests queued up for their freshly cooked fish and chips and then they wandered on to the beach, to watch the sunset. Lovely.
If you’re looking for a fish and chip van for your Whitstable wedding, I highly recommend VC Jones. They make some of the best fish and chips I have ever eaten. Pass the mushy peas.
Share this story
