I Took Photos Of A Vampire Bride For Halloween At The Pilgrims Rest In Battle

The whole thing started when I met Rachel (model and makeup artist) at a wedding where I was the photographer and she was the MUA. We started following each other on Instagram and I saw her fantastic work. She often shares images of herself with the makeup she creates and they are amazing. I saw one where she looked like a vampire and that gave me the idea for this shoot. I wanted to do it close to Halloween, so we would have some cool images to share. I knew that one of my favourite wedding venues in Sussex would be perfect for this.

This venue is the Pilgrims Rest in Battle. It’s a very old, very romantic and charming building. I love photographing weddings there, but I also think that it is the kind of place where a vampire would be happy to live. We picked the date and found some talented people to work with. Emily created the two different hairstyles and Erin did the nails. We got the dress from my favourite wedding dress shop: Fross Wedding Collections and the amazing bouquet from the Floral Workshop.

Rachel got ready at the venue in the room where all the brides get ready and that is where we started shooting. The hairspray shot, the lipstick silhouette shot and the mirror shots were all taken there. I know if she was a real vampire then her reflection should not be seen in the mirror, but we had to take those shots, it just looked so awesome.

Then we went downstairs and I took some close-up portraits to show the details of Rachel’s work and some environmental-style portraits on the stairs and the bar showing more of the building too.

We even went outside and took portraits on the streets of Battle and in front of the Pilgrim's Rest. We had quite a few people looking at us when we took the portraits on the street :)

It was such an awesome shoot, all of us enjoyed it very much.

Huge thank you to Waverley and Amy and Maria from the Pilgrims rest for all their help and for letting us do the shoot in this amazing building.