LIFE & EXPERIENCE

The Best Time Might Be Now

On getting married when you already know a thing or two about life.

There is a particular kind of freedom that comes with doing things when you already know yourself.

You know what you like. What you don’t. Who matters. What deserves your time and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t.

Getting married later in life can carry that same clarity.

The celebration no longer needs to follow a formula simply because that is how weddings are supposed to look. There may be children at the table, families that have grown in unexpected directions, old friends who have witnessed several versions of you, places that already mean something, and stories that began long before the person sitting beside you arrived.

None of that makes the celebration less romantic.

It gives it depth.

Experience changes the question

At some point, the question stops being:

What should a wedding look like?

And becomes:

What do we actually want?

Perhaps it's lunch at a restaurant you love rather than a traditional reception.

A weekend somewhere meaningful.

Twenty people around one extraordinary table.

Or a spectacular party with everyone you've collected along the way.

Maybe you want the dress, the flowers and the ceremony.

Maybe you want all of it — but entirely on your own terms.

And maybe you don't want any of it.

There is something incredibly liberating about making those decisions from experience rather than expectation.

A life already lived

I’m interested in the evidence of a life already lived.

The confidence of someone who knows exactly what they want to wear. The intimacy between two people who no longer need to perform being in love. The children, friends and families who bring their own histories into the room.

The lines on a face.

The gestures that have become familiar.

The way two people look at each other when there is already a story behind the photograph.

I don't want to photograph around those things.

I want to photograph them.

Because beauty doesn't become less interesting with time.

Quite the opposite.

It acquires history, confidence, humour, contradictions and perspective.

Less performance. More presence.

There can be something wonderfully unselfconscious about celebrating later in life.

Not because age automatically makes anyone more confident — it doesn't — but because experience can make it easier to recognise what feels like you and what doesn't.

That matters photographically.

I'm not interested in making people look younger, turning them into somebody else or forcing them into a version of romance borrowed from another generation.

I want beautiful photographs.

I want extraordinary portraits.

I will direct when an image needs direction and step back when it doesn't.

But underneath all of that, I want to recognise the people I'm photographing.

Experience shouldn't disappear from the photograph. It should be part of what makes it interesting.

Maybe now is exactly the right time

There is a strange idea that certain milestones belong to certain ages.

I don't particularly believe in it.

Sometimes the most interesting moment to make a big decision isn't when everything is beginning.

It's when enough has already happened for you to understand why you're making it.

You may arrive at marriage with careers, children, previous relationships, losses, adventures, mistakes, homes, friendships and an entire collection of lives behind you.

And still choose:

this person, now.

There is something very powerful about that.

Perhaps the best time isn't earlier.

Perhaps it isn't later.

Perhaps the best time is simply when you know.