Shot from the ground at the back of the aisle, with one of the groom's Mr. trainers filling the left of the frame and the bride standing at the other end of it, bouquet in both hands.Nobody was moved and nothing was arranged. This is what documentary coverage actually looks like in practice: find the angle, wait, and let the day arrive in its own time.

A groom's Mr. trainer filling the foreground, the bride waiting at the far end of the aisle.

Aisle

Dried petals thrown hard enough to fill the whole frame, a glass in each hand, and two people laughing their way through the middle of it.Paintworks is one of Bristol's better backdrops, all brick and industrial edges, and it takes colour beautifully.

Petals thrown hard enough to fill the frame, a drink in each hand, both of them laughing.

Confetti

Bristol Register Office: red carpet, dark panelling, and two brides holding both hands across the table while the room applauds.A register office ceremony is short. Everything worth having happens in about ninety seconds, so you shoot it like you only get one go at it, because you do.

Two brides holding both hands across the register table, mid-laugh.

Register

Up on the tops with the light going, the lakes laid out underneath and the cloud sitting lower than the two of them are standing.Worth the walk. It usually is.

Up on the tops at sunset, with the cloud sitting lower than they are standing.

Summit

The cloth comes down, hands go up all around it, and the bride is laughing before it has cleared her eyeline. Her family are packed in behind, every one of them watching.Hindu ceremonies are colour, noise and a great deal happening at once. You cannot direct any of it, so you find your position early and stay ready.

The antarpat comes down and the bride is already laughing.

Mandap

Tattooed arms, a steady hand, and a red lip being painted on in close-up, with the rest of the room dropped away entirely.The morning is quiet compared with the rest of the day, which is exactly why it is worth photographing properly.

A red lip going on, close enough to count the glitter on the nails.

Lipstick

Everyone lined up on the steps blowing bubbles, and the family dog wandering into the foreground at exactly the wrong moment, which is to say exactly the right one.Group photographs do not have to be stiff. This one has most of a wedding in it and not a single instruction being followed.

The whole guest list on the castle steps, and the dog stealing it.

Bubbles

The couple are perhaps two per cent of this frame, walking hand in hand along the top of the bank, with flat water and an enormous pale sky doing all of the rest.You do not always need to be close.

Two small figures on the water's edge, with the whole sky above them.

Marshes

Shot low from the table, the bride on her feet with a glass above her head, gold mirror behind her, brick and candlelight either side.The Square Club is a proper Bristol room to eat in, and it lights well without any help from me.

A glass raised under a gilt mirror, exposed brick either side.

Toast

Straight down from above: polished concrete, a dress abandoned in a heap with a single red flower left on it, and a chocolate spaniel lying alongside looking the other way.The details worth keeping are rarely the ones laid out for you.

A dress dropped and left on the concrete, with a spaniel alongside it.

Spaniel

The hora at full tilt, both chairs in the air, the marquee roof clear enough to keep the whole field visible behind it.Made from up high and wide, because the point of this one is how many people are in it.

Both chairs up, a clear marquee, and every phone in the room out.

Hora

Made from the shingle with the camera down on the stones, the groom's brogues and kilt hose framing the picture, and the bride standing in the water at the other end of it, laughing.North Devon in early summer. Cold water, no complaints.

Framed between a pair of brogues, a bride laughing in the shallows.

Pebbles

Chairs out on the lawn, the whole timbered front of the house behind them, and the entire thing repeated upside down in the lily pond in the foreground.Sometimes it is worth taking the long way round the water and shooting the ceremony from the other side of it.

The ceremony from across the water, repeated in the lily pond.

Lily

The tower is halfway to the floor, the blocks are still in the air, and he has thrown both arms out with a bottle in one hand.Lawn games are usually where a wedding day loosens up. Worth watching rather than walking past.

The tower going over, and the man responsible delighted about it.

Jenga

Sunlight coming off the sequins, freckles, eyes screwed shut, and a small pair of arms wrapped round somebody's waist and not letting go.Nobody asked for this and nobody noticed it happening.

A child holding on to a sequinned dress with her whole face.

Freckles

Shot through glass, with a blue and violet wash of reflection taking up most of the frame and the makeup chair sitting small and lit at the bottom of it.Sometimes the most honest picture of the morning is the one where you can barely see anybody at all.

Hair and makeup happening small, at the end of a long blue reflection.

Window

Twenty-odd guests spread the full width of the frame around a blue pool, in the middle of what appears to be several separate incidents happening at once.The house sits on the horizon and the water takes the bottom half of the picture.

The whole evening party arranged around a pool, water pistols included.

Poolside

Shot through a pane so the whole frame carries a haze across it, the bride's head back mid-laugh and the groom's hat coming off in her hand.Shooting through things is a habit worth keeping. It puts the picture where you are actually standing.

A hat coming loose, a head thrown back, all of it through glass.

Brim

Framed through a stone arch, with a wrought iron chandelier hanging into the top of the picture and the top table lit small and warm at the far end of it.Old walls, candle bulbs, and a room that does most of the work for you.

Speeches through a stone arch, under a wrought iron chandelier.

Chandelier

Guests gathered by the door in low evening sun, shot through a stand of purple verbena that takes up most of the foreground and throws the rest of it slightly soft.Clevedon Hall does gold light in the late afternoon better than almost anywhere in Somerset.

Drinks on the drive, seen through a stand of purple verbena.

Verbena

Deep into the night: the bride laughing with paint across her face, a glass held out at arm's length, and a violinist in a sombrero playing straight into the frame.Weddings that book their own bands tend to end like this.

Face paint, a glass in the air, and a violinist in a sombrero.

Mariachi

Father of the bride in a navy suit working at a cufflink by the window, with the dog leaning through the bannister to supervise from three steps up.Ribbons on the staircase, a paper bag on the step, ten minutes before anybody leaves the house.

Cufflinks going in, watched closely from three steps up.

Stairs

Almost the entire frame is shadow. The couple are a few hundred pixels of silhouette in a doorway, held against the last orange of the sky.Underexposing this far is a decision you have to commit to in the moment. There is no rescuing it afterwards, and no reason to want to.

Two silhouettes in a lit doorway, everything else given over to the dark.

Dusk

Shot from above the wall: a man lying full length on a green tarpaulin with his sunglasses still on, and thirty people in the grass behind him paying him no attention whatsoever.Hot afternoon, long day, entirely reasonable behaviour.

One guest flat out on a tarpaulin while the party carries on behind him.

Tarpaulin

Framed through the branches of a big shore tree, with fresh water running down to the sand on the left and two very small figures standing where it meets the sea.Destination work like this is occasional, and always a pleasure.

A couple the size of a thumbnail, where fresh water meets the sea.

Shoreline

Head down over the edge of the fire pit, cigar in his teeth, flames a few inches away and the last of the evening blue behind him.The end of the night is worth staying for.

A cigar lit straight off the fire pit, close enough to feel it.

Documentary wedding photography in Bristol by Gavin Jacob Power