`I'm there for the whole day. It's almost like I become a guest, but I'm on the periphery. The last wedding, I was working for 15 hours, but I love it. This way, I can capture the essence of the whole day. There are no posed shots, just me trying to observe from the background," photographer Charlie McGeever explains.
He took a stand at the RDS Wedding Fair, and since then has been shadowing couples on their big day. McGeever shoots between eight and 12 rolls of 36-exposure films and hands over the lot to the couple, as well as a handmade album. His fee is £750.
It's Saturday morning, April 17th. I'm at a house in Coolock, waiting for Charlie to arrive back from the hairdresser's, where he's been photographing bride Emma Peppard (26) and her bridesmaids, sister Edel and friends Niamh Cardery and Gillian Tier. Emma will be saying "I do" to Vincent Carroll (29) at St Brendan's Church sometime after two this afternoon.
In the house are Emma's mother Ann, sister-in-law Claudia and Claudia's dad Louis, and her two little nieces, Sophie and Tahlia. Emma's dad is dead. It's very peculiar being an interloper in someone's family home on the morning of their wedding, when you have never met any of the family before.
The children are watching Cinderella, perfect wedding-day fare. Louis is keeping an eye on them and the women are getting food ready in the kitchen: trays of sausage rolls and stacks of sandwiches. The front room is stacked with presents. Flowers arrive. I lurk in a corner and eat a sausage roll.
Then everyone arrives back from the hairdresser's and suddenly the house is full, and the front door keeps opening and yet more people arrive. Emma, Gillian, Niamh, and Edel all have beautiful and complicated-looking hairdos. Everyone looks so happy. It's catching.
Charlie is like a cat, flattening himself against the wall with his camera, crouching on the floor, moving noiselessly from room to room. "Emma, you have to eat," orders Ann. Charlie shoots the cheerful chaos in the kitchen. "Say `I do'," orders Edel. Emma says it and everyone giggles. "Five to one, Jesus, is it five to one?" Ann cries. The girls scatter upstairs to dress.
Charlie and I follow. Claudia is dressing the children in white-and-navy frocks, with little capes. Declan, Emma's brother, is standing in front of the mirror, tying his tie and watching Charlie photograph him. Sophie is dressed first and Declan brings her downstairs.
It's Tahlia's turn. Oh, oh, Tahlia won't wear her cape. She throws a tantrum, her sweet little face showing its outrage at the injustice of having to wear anything over her new dress. Charlie is in his element. He gets it all - the tears, the ripping off of the hairband, the furious attempt to pull the dress off, Claudia's dismay. Tahlia will be shown these pictures when she is a self-possessed teenager and she will groan. Everyone else will love them.
EMMA comes running in her underwear and bell-like net skirts, and hugs her niece. Tahlia is taken downstairs, minus her cape. Ann and Claudia flutter around Emma, pulling down the sails of her several layers of net skirts. "How's Vincent going to get near you?" Ann jokes.
Charlie moves around them like a sparring boxer, snapping, snapping, snapping. "Take that camera out of my face," Ann says suddenly. Dressing your daughter for her wedding day with two strangers in the same room would stretch any nerves.
The dress - white raw silk, with a boned bodice - is carefully pulled on over Emma's head. Panic. The bodice isn't sitting properly. Emma pulls it up. Her mother pulls it down. They squall at each other. Claudia, the calmest person in the house, pats Emma's skirts and says nothing.
Then the coat-tailed jacket goes on and is buttoned up. "I hope Vin likes the dress," Emma frets. "It's what's inside the dress that's important," says her mother softly.
Downstairs, Declan is opening champagne. There are about a million people now in the house; relations, neighbours who have come in to see Emma on her way to the church. Someone is going round with a camcorder, filming everyone, including me, in the mistaken belief I am one of Emma's friends. Tahlia, still minus her cape, is now laughing.
The bridesmaids go outside for a smoke. Charlie is reeling through the throng in the hall, snapping, snapping, snapping. A neighbour opens the front door and looks startled as he photographs her stepping into the hall.
Then Emma appears at the top of the stairs, and everyone looks up. She has a white hat on now. Her bridesmaids wait at the bottom of the stairs, with her going-away bag, as everyone oohs and ahs. Her mother fairly beams. Charlie snaps.
Almost two, and it's time to leave the house. Vincent will be waiting at the church. Time for me to slip away. Getting into the taxi, I look back and see Charlie, still snapping.
