life {a personal post}

We are just getting ready to photograph our last wedding of 2012. Remember Kirsty and Fin? (you might recognise Kirsty from the front page of our wedding brochure), well Kirsty's bridesmaid is getting married to her farmer in the Perthshire countryside and I'm pretty sure that it's going to be an excellent way to end the year. Also, quite the contrast to our last wedding (above) which was in the Oxfordshire countryside, totally gorgeous, totally different. Jo and James got married in Henley on Thames, which was a beautiful insight into what is to come next year; we move south in less than a fortnight.

When I wrote this post back in March I didn't actually believe that it was going to happen, but it has, Lillian and Leonard are going to be London Wedding Photographers. We're incredibly excited and are really looking forward to the London, Brighton, Manchester and Norfolk weddings we have booked next year and all the new things we have to learn about weddings south of the border. Did you know that in England they have DJs, not ceilidh bands? And that men wear coats with tails and not tartan skirts? Also, that you're not allowed to get married outside, no one is really very sure what Humanism is and registrars won't let you photograph the signing of the marriage certificate? It's wild.

There are so many other things to look forward to as well; museums, cafes, museum cafes, international cuisine, a wealth of wedding photographer friends and wonderful clients who want to hang out with us and the kiddos. The kiddos who are two by the way. I'm not quite sure how or when that happened, but it did and before we knew it we'd survived another year of running a business and having twins and moving house. This time last year I wrote this post about how we were managing it, this year managing it has seemed like less of an achievement, despite photographing even more weddings that we did the first year. Probably because the girls are bigger, more like real people and less like very unhappy alien visitors who have to be kept happy. We're back to Nye and I both working on the business and both looking after the kids, fairly equally. It's a huge improvement.

Anyway. I just wanted to acknowledge the end of the year and the beginning of our new adventure, before it all gets too overwhelming. We move in 12 days and in the meantime we've scheduled some weddings to appear while we're gone. Thank you so much to everyone who has encouraged us to make this huge move, your support has been invaluable and we'll see you on the other side, when we're London Wedding Photographers!

Lillian and Leonard....

We have some exciting news... as of the end of this year Lillian and Leonard are moving to London!

We have truly loved being a part of the wedding industry in Scotland and leaving it won't be without its sadness. We have really found our place here among beautiful venues and supportive colleagues and we couldn't be more grateful. But after a long year of 'should we? shouldn't we?' we've decided to take a jump, follow our dream and move to the Big Smoke. And it's not like it's completely new, over the last five years we've been a part of some amazing English weddings and we're really excited about making this our new life!

We are planning to be in Scotland until the end of 2012 and will still be taking bookings for weddings here up until November, from then on in though we will be primarily working in London and the surrounding areas. So if you're getting married in or around London (or even further afield, we're open to exploring) in 2013 we would love to hear from you. Equally, European weddings? Please do get in touch, international travel is looking a lot easier from London Town that it does from little old Glasgow!

Of course, we will still be happy to travel and will be coming back to Scotland throughout the year to visit friends and family so if you had your heart set on Lillian and Leonard for your 2013 Scottish wedding, please do still get in touch.

In the meantime, wish us luck, our latest adventure is going to be a big one!

*photos from the first time we went to London together and said 'let's live here one day.' 

France {Languedoc}

Nye's parents moved to Languedoc in the south of France a couple of years ago. After 12 months of moving around the region in rented Gites they finally into a brand new, light-filled house last year. Overlooking the valley, their beautiful white space clings to an ancient hillside covered in small, gnarled oak and olive trees. The scent of wild thyme fills the air as you scramble up scree-strewn paths and at night the grunts and snuffles of wild boar and the twit-twoos of tiny owls spill out of the forest.

We are just back from a holiday there, taking the girls to visit their grandparents (and grand-dog) and enjoying a diet of bread, wine and cheese for ten days before the wedding season starts in earnest. We love visiting Languedoc. From the chic and cosmopolitan city of Montpelier to the deserted sandy beaches of the coast, the whole region is beautiful. Winter is a glorious, albeit quiet, time to visit. You have everything to yourself; the vineyards and châteaus, olive groves and horse ranches, tiny empty towns and villages that in the summers are filled to bursting and the restaurants that are open for 3 hours on a Tuesday. 

We would love to photograph some weddings in Languedoc and neighbouring Provence, especially now that we have a base (and babysitters!) there. Our French is abysmal (non-existent actually) but I think we could get by, it didn't hold us back in August 2009 when we photographed Karen and Darren's wedding in St Bonnet and we do plan to learn, honestly. Wherever we went I couldn't help sighing to Nye 'oh, this would make a beautiful wedding location, let's work here. Let's live here.' So:  2013 weddings in the south of France? Yes please. In fact 2013 weddings anywhere in France sounds pretty wonderful to me, okay? 

Dreams {personal}

We don't often share anything too personal here but 2011 has been kind of huge for us and it would have felt wrong to end the year without acknowledging that. As some of you might know, at the end of 2010 we had twins (girls, non identical, 5lb8 and 6lb1). And then we proceeded to shoot more weddings than we've ever shot in a single year. We also decided that apart from the weekends when we had weddings we would do it without any additional childcare. I know, crazy.

"I don't know how you made it work" is something that we've heard over and over, from friends, from clients, from other photographers who want to have babies but are scared of what it will do to their business. And the truth is, I don't know either, I just know that with routines that we clung to desperately like life rafts, the supreme kindness of friends and family when we had weddings and blind faith that it would be okay in the end, we did. And that it's been alternately unimaginably hard and unimaginably wonderful.

The thing is that when we started the business and we started working together back in 2008 this was the goal, to be able to have a family and to spend time with that family every day. To share work and parenting equally, for neither of us to have to work full time or to parent single-handedly. There have been times when it really hasn't worked out like that; months over the summer when one of us (Cara) was chained to the desk and the other (Nye) paced the park day in day out with two crying babies and the world's biggest double buggy. Months where we slept in shifts, handing the babies over groggily at 6am and again at midday, and in those months weddings took on a whole new spin: the only time that we got to spend together not being parents. It has been a huge period of readjustment, of figuring out how to make it work, of making mistakes and trying really hard to learn from them. But you have to pay a price for living your dream and that has been ours.

Dreams aren't a walk in the park (except when they are. In the rain. With the world's biggest double buggy) but my goodness, are they worth it.

A Practical Wedding.

Photo: One Love Photo

 "Ever since I started writing APW, I wanted to write a wedding book with my particular perspective. A sane book. A mildly irreverent book. A book that told you it was ok to do what you wanted, but you also had to respect other people's feelings. A book inspired by all the Miss Mannersbooks I giggled over as a small child lying at the bottom of a very large bookshelf, but with how-to instructions on how to actually get the job done. A book with some proper wedding history included. A book that told you how to get to the other side with grace and with your dignity and savings more or less intact. I wanted to write the book I really needed when I was planning." Meg, author of A Practical Wedding: Creative Solutions for Planing a Beautiful, Affordable and Meaningful Celebration.

Our dear friend Meg wrote a book about weddings, about marriage, about what's important and what isn't and we are so proud of her. Not just because she got a book published but because she got a really important book published, one that says all of the things that people are scared to say about weddings and marriage. If you're engaged or you're thinking of getting engaged (or someone you know is one of those things) then please buy a copy, it will change your wedding experience for the better, I promise. Also you might just find Cara in there, sharing the wisdom of a Wedding Survivor.

unorthodox

I think that this probably isn't an accessory we'll be taking along to weddings this year. But for the occassional engagement shoot? Perhaps.

Introducing...

Ella and Amelia, born on November 5th 2010.

We are currently on leave while we get to know our new babies and will be back in the office, well, one day. In the meantime we will be trying to answer emails as frequently as possible and we thank you for your patience.

Cara and Nye xx

shiny and new

www.lillianandleonard.com

When we started Lillian and Leonard we had no money, none at all. We did however have a library card so off we went and brought home as many books as we could find about building your own website. For weeks I didn't see Nye as he sat in front of the computer scowling at HTML For Idiots and swearing at the the screen. Months later we had a website.


It was a little slow, a little cranky, a little blurry around the edges and virtually impossible to find with search engines but we loved it and we were so very proud of it. Well we have finally outgrown that website and while letting go of it (and paying for the new one) was painful we are really excited with the new www.lillianandleonard.com


It's faster, it's sleeker, it's shinier and most importantly it's so much easier to update. Previously adding a new gallery to our site would take us, oh pretty much a month. Now we can do it in minutes. If that's not worth parting with a hundred million pounds (or thereabout) then nothing is.

We've also been tinkering with our poor neglected blog, sorting our our sidebar links and adding some of the great venues, florists, bands and other wedding pros we've worked with over the last year as well as a more comprehensive list of the best wedding inspiration that we have found on the internet.

A litte trip...

We are going to be out of the office until Friday for a little trip. We will be without internet access while we're away but will answer your emails as soon as we get back. Assuming we come back that is, where we're off to is really very heavenly and the temptation to stay might prove quite overwhelming!