Am quite excited as have another wedding to cover in Australia next year – on a boat in Sydney Harbour -

http://www.starshipsydney.com.au/index.html

so will be out of the UK around that time, though we will still be available for weddings with other photographers in our team.

Bedouin Bride Ayesha with her  wedding photographer, Elaine of Reel Life Photos in Petra, Jordan.

http://sites.google.com/site/nawafdeserttours/

The above site is a good place to start if wanting to experience an insight into Bedouin life and to meet real Bedouins.

Saturday morning 6 June 2009, as I was on my way out to cover Karen & Tony’s wedding at Gomersal Park Hotel in West Yorkshire, an email bounced in telling me that there were to be two Bedouin weddings in Petra on Thursday – just a few days away.  Nawaf – a tour guide in Petra – had been given my details by his cousin who sells Bedouin jewellery by the Treasury – one of the 7 official wonders of the world – in Petra.  So would I like to come and take their photos?  You bet!  

Natural rock forms this elephant -like “sculpture”  in Petra .

A goat wanders past the Bedouin wedding tent inside the Bedouin Village in Little Petra.

Two flights and several thousand miles later I was in a hired car and driving along the Jordan side of the Dead Sea, having decided that getting out of downtown Amman was hard enough with only sketchy directions, so seeing a sign to the Dead Sea reckoned I couldn’t get lost following that route – and it certainly would be prettier than the Motorway direct.  This was on 4pm the day before the main wedding celebrations.  Someone had agreed with me that it would only take 3 hours to get to Petra from Amman, but with a few stops to takes pictures en-route and going the long way round, meant it took 6 hours and was dark by the time I hit the mountain pass! 

 Humpback roads near the wedding in Petra..

All the way down the frequent check point officers had always waved me on after initially indicating that I should stop.  At the turn off from the Dead Sea however, two cheery officers requested to see my passport.  Two became four and they seemed keen to keep me talking whilst still holding on to my passport.

“Come on. Give it back to me please”, I said, whilst they continued to quiz me in Arabic.  Now I only know a few words which I picked up from a trip in February to Taba Heights and to Cairo for wedding last year, so we seemed to reach a Stalemate that no amount of pleading would shift. An all the time it was getting darker and darker and I was missing out on the evenings pre-wedding celebrations.

Just when I thought I might be detained all night, they gave me back my passport and off I shot up the winding road into the darkness.  Several twisty roads and villages/towns later I arrived in Petra to be greeted by Nawaf, and escorted to the Bedouin camp where dancing and  clapping to music by the men marked the late evening’s wedding celebrations.

 Nawaf – Bedouin desert tour guide

The lighting casts dramatic shadows and sparkles of light off the traditionally Arab-dressed Bedouins

Bedouin men celebrate the wedding by dancing late into the night

 Daytime view of Ayesha’s Bedouin wedding tents.

The next day things slowly got going with dancing on the women’s side and cups of teas on the men’s side.

Two cousins marry on th same day in Bedouin tents  in Petra, Jordan. These are of Mona’s wedding tents – one for the men, and one for the women.

While the men sit and sup tea Bedouin Bride Mon a prepares to leave her family home with her new husband , watched by a crowd of children and their Mums.

 Bedouin groom holds his bride Mona’s hand.

Meanwhile Bedouin chefs prepare freshly slaughtered goat in a savoury sauce with rice for the wedding feast in a tent in the desert in Petra

and  the Bedouin male guests  share a bowl of water as they wait in the big black tents for the bride and women to arrive with the second bride Ayesha,

while another Bedouin wedding guest offers congratulations the groom’s  father.

4×4 wedding car decorated with ribbons sets off from tents in desert in Petra to pick up Bedouin bride Ayesha

detail of Bedouin bride Ayesha’s wedding outfit showing her rings on her gloved hand

This wedding hair and make-up specialist shop in El Minya, Egypt was a hive of activity when I arrived around 4pm to start cover of Afram and Mona’s wedding. One Muslim bride was almost ready to head off for her wedding and Mona was lying in a chair, her beautiful white wedding dress covered with a purple plastic apron. Mona’s hairdresser was busy plucking her eyebrows, thickly adding strong dark lines to make them really stand out. He then proceeded to add layers of lilac and sparkling white to her eyelids in a powerful pattern, before painting several matching pinky lilac layers on her lips.

Then another guy starts work styling the brides hair, using doubly hooked bent hairpins, black hair nets and a very hot set of curling tongs that have been heated on a one of the gas flames set on the bench!

Despite extremely dirty rain windows managed to get a few nice pics of the palm-lined little river that kept us company throughout alongside the train tracks.

I’m sitting in a top floor restaurant-bar with glass walls on 3 sides, looking out over the river Nile at night. It could almost be any river at night with a string of roadside amber lights reflecting into the water at regular intervals, but for the constant hum of traffic and manic horn-tooting as the drivers weave in and out precariously – clumsy as feet with shoes on in the shifting sand beneath them. Its cooler up here as my single room faces the untidy jumble of services into a tiny square of internal fresh air that seems to come only from a Mummy’s tomb.

Mona & Afram actually just did their civil ceremony tonight (while I sat in their family home doing emails!) – the paperwork only for their wedding really – without anyone there and dressed in jeans, but tomorrow have their Henna party, so the wedding celebrations proper start to get underway then, with their Orthodox Church wedding the day after, at 8pm. I’ll be covering it all, from start to finish, so that will be exciting!

View of River Nile from top of King Akhenaton Hotel in El Minya

Morning dawns to reveal the Nile in a totally different light: a hazy fat line split in the middle with a mile long island, complete with cows grazing and a little lake within itself too. The opposite side has a narrow fertile strip filled with banana trees and the odd palm, above which rise well-eroded mountain rocks in faded pink and blue hues.

Egyptian breakfast of soup of chewy brown beans, tomatoes, cucumber, cold potatoes mashed with fresh parsley, cheeses soft and hard, (had to pass on the boiled egg, bread, jam and spreading cheese and cold meat) and the ever present Egyptian tea will keep even the neediest body going all day. Time to wander around and explore, before the henna party gets going late this afternoon

   Our first impressions of Ireland are happy ones, despite the driving rain, as we passed roadside stalls selling strawberries  and potatoes, 

discovered a home from home B&B – Hillside House in Gorey, County Wexford – and found everyone so friendly along the way.

View from Hillside  House B& B which is highly recommended by Reel Life Photos for service and location!

This dog seemed quite at home in his owner’s cab,

Love the colourful shops and houses – so full of personality! 

Its the Strawberry Festival this weekend in Enniscorthy so the wedding in the afternoon will be sharing the celebrations with all the strawberry lovers!

 We rounded off our first full day in Southern Ireland listening  and recording live music of a girl band singing and playing as a quartet at the delightful bar and reastaurant  the BANK in Gorey.

 

 

    At the opposite end of the scale, this was followed by a wedding in Tenerife http://weddingphotos-video.co.uk/blog/?p=24   and here http://89.200.138.14/~weddingp/online/verifycus.php?shoot_id=841 where the sun shone brightly, adding romance to the sunset wedding pictures. 

   In March this year we had a fabulous location 10,000 miles away – in Jacob’s Creek Retreat in the Barossa valley, Australia – http://weddingphotos-video.co.uk/blog/?p=248 .  We did of course tag on a holiday! 

  This month (May) our overseas wedding was in the Loire valley France http://weddingphotos-video.co.uk/blog/?p=286 and http://89.200.138.14/~weddingp/online/verifycus.php?shoot_id=887/view.php?flag=view§ion_id=1045 

Our next overseas wedding is on 28 June – in Southern Ireland.  That one is going to be particularly exciting as it’s the first of 3 wedding days – for the same couple –  as they are having the Catholic church wedding in St. Aidans Cathedral in Enniscorthy followed by the reception at Amber Springs Hotel In Gorey, Wexford, then the following week its back to the UK for a civil wedding at Luton Hoo, in Bedfordshire, followed by the final wedding ceremony the week after – a traditional Hindu wedding – in a marquee in St. Albans!  Phew!