Maurice and Tony’s civil partnership at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion.

Maurice and Tony booked me to be the photographer at their civil partnership ceremony at the Royal Pavilion on Saturday. They had already done the official civil partnership bit at Brighton Register Office some time before, but wanted to mark the occasion with a proper celebration.

Maurice is originally from New Zealand and Tony comes from Thailand, they met when Maurice was working over there as a teacher. Both their families had made the long trips to the UK to see them get hitched. I joined them in the morning, where everybody was at their home in Brighton getting ready for the day. We left the house just after 10.00am to be at The Pavilion for the ceremony at 11.00am. The Red Drawing Room was packed out and the Pavilion staff had provided extra seats to try and fit everybody in.

After complaining about the rain for two weeks I’d now like to make a further complaint about the sunshine this weekend, it was much too bright, can’t you turn that thing down a bit? When the ceremony and photos in the Music Room were finished at about 1.00pm we went outside for some group photos, just when the sun was burning down on the front of the Pavilion from nearly it’s highest point in the sky, with not a cloud to be seen. This is probably the worst time of day for taking photos of people, the light’s horrible, the highlights are too bright, the shadows are too dark and everybody is squinting in the light. Normally I can get around very bright sun by taking the photo in the shade or turning people so they face away from the light. But, the whole point of having photos taken outside the Royal Pavilion is to show the Pavilion, so most people had the sun in their faces for the main group. As it happens I think it looks OK, and at least Maurice and Tony had something to show where they’d been.

I took a few more photos of Tony and Maurice on their own, some in the shade of the pillars at the front of the building, and finally at the North Gate posing with a vintage car, before they left for the reception at Havanna in Duke Street. I stayed for the wedding breakfast and finished the day with an hour at the evening party. Congratulations to you both.

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