The photographs can rekindle your memories and help you relive a unique occasion for years to come. But we also know that a poor photographer can dominate the day and leave you with the feeling that the photography somehow seemed more important than the wedding. We know because our clients tell us. We constantly hear tales of guests kept hanging around for two hours or more at the church, or the meal being delayed because the photographs have overrun.

So what should you look for when choosing someone to take on the photographic responsibility? Well, obviously photographic ability must come close to the top of the list. At a minimum you should look for membership of one of the photographic institutes. The two main ones are the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) and the Master Photographers Association (MPA) As members of the BIPP we've included a link to the institute's site on the contact page if you want to look further.

Both of them set exacting standards for membership so you should be getting someone who is capable of producing photographs of a high standard. You should check however that they qualified in wedding photography and not say, food photography!

Personality counts for a lot. Somebody you get on with is much more likely to think along similar lines to you and therefore produce results you are happy with. As you'd expect we're warm and friendly individuals and very easy to get on with (!) but we think this is so important that a couple of times we've turned down bookings because of personality clashes.

We've tried many different pricing systems over the years and tried to reflect the vast variation in wedding day arrangements in them. However, changes in UK marriage laws a few years ago means that many new venues are now licensed to carry out the ceremony - with many of them happy to help with the reception as well. This gives tremendous freedom to design the day the way you want it to be- it could be just a few friends at a restaurant or it could be a grand formal occasion with hundreds of people at a castle or stately home.

Because of this we've tried to build as much flexibility as we can into pricing our photography. Below there's details of three pricing methods that cover just about all the requests and wedding arrangements we've encountered recently.