Real Wedding: Charlotte & Oliver at Clare College, Cambridge

Their Story

Charlotte and Oliver met during their final undergraduate year at Cambridge — Charlotte reading Architecture at Clare College, Oliver reading Computer Science across the river at Trinity. Six years and two London careers later (Charlotte as a junior architect, Oliver as a software engineer), they found themselves planning a wedding that would have to do two distinct jobs: capture Cambridge as a city, and capture them as a couple. Clare College — Charlotte's old college, with its gardens running straight down to the Cam — solved both problems in a single venue.

The forecast for the last Saturday of August was not promising. A band of rain was due across East Anglia from late morning; the Master's Garden ceremony had a marquee backup, but Charlotte had been quietly hoping for outdoors since the day they'd booked the venue. By eleven o'clock the cloud was thinning. By midday the sky had gone the clear pale blue that English summers occasionally produce as an apology, and by the time the seventy-five guests were taking their seats on the lawn the day was perfect.

Before any of that, though, there was the first look on the Backs. Charlotte's father, who had walked her down a similar stretch of riverbank on every family visit since she was eighteen, met her halfway between Clare Bridge and King's. Neither of them said anything for the first thirty seconds. I photographed it from a distance — long lens, no interference — and I think those frames may be the quietest of the day.

The ceremony itself was held in the Master's Garden at three o'clock, with the registrar conducting a humanist service Charlotte and Oliver had written themselves. There were two readings — one from a friend, one from Oliver's older brother — and rings exchanged under a small floral arch by Wild Petal Cambridge in coral charm peonies and trailing sage.

Then came the part of the day no one will forget. Between ceremony and reception, the entire wedding party — bride, groom, bridesmaids in coral linen, groomsmen with rolled-up sleeves — piled onto five punts arranged by Scudamore's, and we punted from Clare's lower garden up to the Mathematical Bridge and back. Champagne, shoes off, drinks balanced on the side of the boats, Charlotte laughing in a wedding dress on a punt — those are the photographs everyone has been asking for.

Back at the college, dinner was served in the Old Hall by The Old College Caterers: long tables, oak panelling, candles in heavy silver holders, three courses of properly considered food. Speeches came between the main and dessert. The biggest surprise of the day was saved for last: Oliver's eighty-three-year-old grandmother, who had flown in from Sydney that morning despite a year of telling everyone she was too unwell to travel, stood up, walked unaided to the front of the room, and gave a five-minute speech that closed with the line "I told them I was coming. I didn't tell them I was speaking." There wasn't a dry eye in the hall, including Oliver's.

After dinner the party moved into the Fellows' Garden. Spinning Plates DJ Co. set up under the festoon lighting; Cambridge Garden Games had set out croquet on the lawn for golden hour; the Polaroid station by Instant Studio collected one frame and one line from every guest in a hardback book. The dancing went on until midnight, and the croquet went on slightly longer than that.

It was a wedding that did exactly what Charlotte and Oliver had asked of it: it held the whole city in a single day, and it held them in the middle of it.