What actually happens if it rains on your wedding day

Somewhere around the ten-day forecast, every couple we have ever worked with sends the same message. A screenshot, a rain icon, and a row of question marks. We understand it completely. You have spent a year planning a day and the sky is the one thing you can't book. So let us tell you what actually happens, from the point of view of the people holding the cameras, because it is a great deal less dramatic than the forecast makes it feel.

The short version: the film is still the film. The long version is more interesting.

Overcast is the light we would choose if we could choose. Rain is overcast with a story in it.

What rain does to the light

Here is the thing nobody tells you. Bright sunshine is the hardest light to film a wedding in. It puts hard shadows under eyes, it makes people squint, it turns a white dress into a glowing blank and a dark suit into a hole. We spend sunny weddings hunting for shade. A cloudy sky does the opposite: the whole sky becomes the light source, soft and even and flattering from every angle. Skin looks like skin. Nobody squints. The colours in the flowers and the grass go rich instead of bleached.

Rain adds two things to that. Wet stone and wet paths reflect, which means every lamp and window doubles itself at your feet, and after dark that is the most beautiful thing a camera can point at. And the air gets a softness, especially in the country, that makes a house or a castle look painted rather than photographed. If you have ever wondered why so much of the most romantic footage you have seen looks grey and glowing rather than blue and sharp, that is why.

What rain does to the plan

This part is practical. The ceremony is indoors or under cover, so nothing changes there. The family photographs move inside, and every good venue has a spot: a hallway with a window, a staircase, a drawing room, the porch. The drinks reception was probably going to be indoors anyway once the first shower came through, and guests are much happier in a warm room than they let on. So the only thing rain genuinely takes from the day is the outdoor couple portraits, and it usually doesn't even take those.

Because Irish rain moves. It comes in bands, it passes, and there is nearly always a gap. We watch the radar on the day the way other people watch the football, and we have learned to say "give it twenty minutes" and be right more often than not. When the gap comes, you get fifteen minutes outside in the best light of the year, with wet ground reflecting the sky and a freshness in the air you can see on camera. Then it closes in again and you come back in for a drink, and honestly that is a better afternoon than standing on a lawn in blazing sun for an hour.

The umbrella walk

If the gap doesn't come, there is the umbrella. Two people under one clear umbrella, walking away from the camera down an avenue in the rain, has been the best shot in more of our films than any other single set-up, and it only happens when it rains. Couples who came back from that walk have never once said they wished it had been sunny. Ask the venue whether they have clear umbrellas, because the white and cream ones photograph beautifully and the golf umbrella with the bank's logo on it does not.

Lauraine and Brian married at Luttrellstown in November, and the image on the front of their film is the two of them under a white umbrella on the castle steps. That shot doesn't exist on a dry day.

What we would say

• Stop checking the forecast at ten days. It is a coin toss at that range in Ireland, and it will cost you a week of sleep for nothing. The forecast for a given afternoon means something about two days out, and even then it mostly means "showers", which is what we just described.
• Ask the venue for their rain spots now. Every good venue has three. Knowing them in advance turns a scramble into a plan.
• Get two clear umbrellas. Not one. One of you always ends up holding it and the other gets wet.
• Think about shoes. A second pair for the walk, and something for the guests' walk from the church door to the cars. Wet stone steps in heels are the one genuine hazard of a rainy wedding, and the film can't help with that.

We have never had a film spoiled by rain, and we have filmed a lot of rain. Some of the wettest days turned out the most beautiful. What spoils a film is a couple who spent the afternoon upset about the weather, and the only cure for that is knowing in advance that it matters far less than it feels like it does. It really does.