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Family dynamics

25th Feb 2018

This award-winning wedding photo had us in absolute floods

A once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Anna O'Rourke

This award-winning wedding photo had us in absolute floods

Weddings can be tear-inducing at the best of times, but this image is next-level.

A wedding photographer has scooped a major award for a snap that’s left us reaching for the tissues.

Sean Weekly managed to capture the moment a woman’s parents saw her for the first time in her wedding dress and it’s just stunning.

It shows parents Mark and Sonia Lester’s emotional reaction to seeing their daughter Sam as a bride on her big day last year.

The image won Sean a Masters of Photography award, which recognises the best wedding photography in the UK and Ireland.

He’s used to weddings but found this one especially emotional, he said, as the family had lost Sam’s older sister Jenna to a sudden illness 12 years before.

“They just broke down in tears seeing their ‘little girl’ about to be married,” Sean told SWNS.

“I guess her parents were so proud but also sad in the sense that it felt to them they were losing another daughter – in a good way of course!”

Sam married her partner Darryl Jackson in Epping, England last July.

Jenna was very much to the forefront of everyone’s minds on the day, Sam said.

“I felt like my parents should have seen her in a wedding dress before me.

“She would have been married by now for sure, she was an absolute stunner!

“So for my parents not to have seen Jen in a wedding dress I think they may have found it difficult seeing me.”