Wedding Photographer Dubai, Four Seasons Hotel
Well this was quite the experience…! I’ve been fortunate to capture weddings all over Europe before – including places such as Montenegro, France, Greece, Turkey, Switzerland, Portugal and more – but I’d never been outside of Europe for a wedding. That was until Alice & DMO asked me to photograph their big day in Dubai, at The Four Seasons hotel, on Jumeirah Beach.
What a day! A beautiful outdoor ceremony, two stunning dresses worn by Alice, an amazing lightshow/production for their reception, the best man ‘temporarily misplacing’ one of the rings (which he later found, don’t worry!), touching speeches, probably the biggest wedding cake I’ve ever seen…. Dubai is larger than life, and Alice & DMO’s wedding really reflected that vibe; just awesome.
I personally made the most of being in Dubai by bringing my family along as well, making it a bit of a ‘working holiday’. Dubai is such an experience! It was fab to be able to take my kids up the tallest building in the world – the Burj Khalifa (which is 830m tall; almost a km!) – spend time on glorious beaches, and even have my own family photographed for the first time by the amazing Ana Backhaus, who I became friends with ever since I created This is Reportage: Family, a worldwide community of documentary family photographers. Ana did a fantastic job, and I’ll share some of her images of my family on my site and socials soon.
We also had quite the major drama, as the day we were due to leave Dubai was the day of the floods – when Dubai had 1.5 years worth of rain in a single day! I’ll never forget the taxi to the airport, with the 6-lane super-highway limited to the single lane, with cars bobbing about and floating in the floods in the other lanes…pretty hairy, to say the least! We were lucky to just have a 6 hour delay; lots of people, including wedding guests, weren’t able to leave Dubai at all, and were stranded there for days.
But anyway, you’re not here for my words, I think, so let’s get to some of my favourite photos from my first time as a wedding photographer in Dubai – 100% natural moments, as Alice & DMO wanted no groups or couple-time, just pure documentary coverage:
