AshleySherwood, Author at Weddings

‘New Beginnings’

On 31st March we were invited to join some very talented and lovely wedding suppliers at the stunning Jervaulx Abbey, Jervaulx, Ripon, North Yorkshire

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The backstory!

The truth is, until a few years ago, neither of us knew how to use a camera properly and no one in our families, or circle of friends were filmmakers or photographers. It wasn’t something we ever considered.

I bet you haven’t heard videographers/photographers say that before!

17 years ago we met at work, we were both very young Police Officers, both very passionate about helping people and we are proud to have helped many people throughout our time in public service. Although our personalities were different, they were complimentary and there was immediate chemistry between us. Within a year of meeting we were engaged, two years later we were married and two daughters later, we had the epiphany. Although we had both built successful careers, we realised that there is more to life than working in a job that doesn’t make you happy, and prevented us from having the time together as a family we craved. We wanted to build a better life for the future.

But what was it we were going to do??

What happened next is a little crazy!……. We really liked our wedding video, but it was a bit old fashioned, and we had spent a number of years attending lots of weddings, as our friends were all getting married. Weddings were a lot of fun, and I’d always been into photography and filmmaking as a hobby – I just loved documenting life and being able to relive memorable times. My love of photography stems from capturing people and their truth, rather than an artistic pursuit.

Combining a desire to start our own business, with hobby level experience of cameras, videography and photography I set out to learn everything I could about wedding videography. It sounds crackers now I’m writing it down, but this is how it happened! After attending the university of YouTube and spending most of our savings on some camera equipment, I offered to film a friend’s sister’s wedding. It turned out alright and I really enjoyed it!

It got crazier still…….

Lyndsey joined me in learning this new craft, and she loved it so much, that within a year we had both decided to leave the Police, we enrolled on University degree courses and lived the student life we had never had – apart from, we had 2 young kids, a mortgage and were capturing people’s weddings most weekends! Neither of us had thought of ourselves as ‘creative’ or ‘artistic’ in the past, but we were very practical, hard working, adaptable and understood that people face all sorts of adversity in life and each have their own journey, and we could relate to that.

We learned filmmaking, photography and business together, and it turns out we were much more creative than we thought! We were providing the standard of service that we would want to receive ourselves or know that our family of friends would receive. We proudly offered people a unique and inclusive style of wedding filmmaking and photography. In the summer of 2020 we had both graduated with first class honours degrees in Media, Photography and Business, and in that time had been so lucky to have had the opportunity to tell many amazing and individual stories for our couples.

Along the way we had opened a creative studio space, started a commercial photo and video brand (Your Story Creative), but like so many others, our business was impacted by the events of the past two years, and we had to leave the studio, so we reassessed, considered our livelihood, repurposed our garage as our mini studio and workspace and Lyndsey even went and qualified as a Business Teacher.

We feel incredibly lucky to come out of the other end of things, and have since been able to restructure our business to focus on telling the stories of our wonderful wedding couples, supporting other professionals in the wedding industry with our online community Wedding Mavericks, and begin working with small businesses and charitable organisations to create content for their online marketing campaigns.

​Lyndsey and I are both modest, down to earth, genuine people and we act with integrity. There are no egos, we feel that being able to tell people’s stories is a real privilege, and to do something we really do enjoy in this way, gives us the balance with family life that we so desperately craved.

Providing a personal, but excellent standard of customer service, with a relaxed, fun and creative approach to capturing your wedding is our priority, so if that sounds like what you are looking for, then we would love to chat with you.

Hear it from those that count

If you would like an honest, real and relevant insight into the service we provide, please take a look at what our previous couples have said about us, as they were getting married – just like you!

Read our amazing reviews

Yay, the new website is finally up and running! We are Lyndsey & Jules and we’re so thrilled to be sharing this with you and wish the warmest of welcome’s to Your Story Studios. We wanted to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves and thank you for taking a look at our website and our work.

We started our storytelling journey back in 2017, when Jules (sometimes Julian, sometimes Ju!) had a dream of following his creative instinct by using film and photo to provide memories of an incredibly special day for couples. From the very beginning, we created stories that were as individual as the people involved. That’s the only true way to do it right? Having spent over 15 years in the police and experiencing both very meaningful, and harrowing incidents, we feel that we have a diverse understanding of people at their core from all walks of life, we can empathise and believe in treating everyone with respect.

Our lives are shaped around our two girls, and we’re at our happiest when we can spend time altogether, doing things we enjoy. That’s something we missed out on when we were in the Police, so to have had the opportunity to start over, doing something we love and to have so much more time with them, has been a blessing.

It’s our firm belief that you never know when life will change and the last two years have taught us all that, if nothing else! You simply don’t know when you’ll hear that voice or see that face for the last time, and that’s what inspires us to create such unique wedding fims and photos.

These days, we all enjoy sharing our moments with others. There are so many social media platforms, and communication applications that sharing is instinctive rather than planned, and recording media is ingrained into many peoples lives. So with this journal we will share some of the stories we’re lucky enough to be given the chance to help tell, there will be helpful hints and tips, and insight into some of the things we have been up to.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know us a little bit and for looking through our work, we hope our purpose resonates with you and maybe you’ll give us the chance to tell your story.

Best wishes,

Lyndsey & Jules x

This is a quite a big topic, one that covers numerous elements of life and the experiences you have along the way. But I really want to be able to summarise it in just a few paragraphs so that hopefully someone will read it and get it, rather than just clicking elsewhere or falling asleep!

As a young child my parents separated, and we were quite poor. I was influenced by many to find a job which would lead to a secure, well paid career. Couple this with the fact that if I wanted something I had to find a way to buy it myself, so I gravitated towards obtaining a vocation rather than working out what I was really interested in. This story is probably quite common, and probably explains why at times I have found myself working with very talented, hard working people who appeared unfulfilled like me.

I never reached my potential from an academic perspective, too distracted by earning money and having fun, but looking back, not pursuing higher education was one of my biggest regrets, one that I am now trying to rectify. I was never particularly talented when it came to building or fixing, but I was a good problem solver, had a very practical mind, and loved working with people. Somehow the application form for the Police made its way in front of me and I filled it out among with many others for a variety of jobs. Fast forward 13 years I was a Police Sergeant working in one of the biggest and busiest cities in the country – I was good at it, but I hated it.

Why I was unhappy with my career in the police is another huge topic of its own, but I knew something had to change. I started to explore what else I might be able to do. I had always had a creative and passionate spirit, I had always loved photography, filming, editing and writing, but I guess my path through adolescence pointed me away from the gamble of finding success in creative employment. But now I was a little more worldly wise, and I could see an opportunity to utilise the people skills I had acquired in different way, and join them with the photography, filming and editing skills I had enjoyed as a hobby.

But you can’t just go into business can you? Yes, I have thought that myself, and there were also many others thinking it, some made their thoughts known to me, some kept them to themselves. It could have stopped at that point, but I knew I didn’t want to have any regrets. So I pushed my self forward, I stopped thinking about what others might think, and I worked out how I was going to turn a dream into a reality.

For anyone who has ever taken a journey like this you will know that it has its up’s and down’s, and it is not a short process. You are playing the long game, things don’t happen overnight, you have to adapt, you need to be prepared to try things and fail. Throughout I never stop learning, adapting, and growing as a person, this is what excites me – I love a challenge! I have long term goals to focus on, and short term ones to keep me motivated. I love being more in control of my own destiny, seeing reward from effort, and being able to decide what is important rather than being told what the priorities are. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard, it is a bit scary, and there is a long journey ahead until Your Story Films is exactly what I would like it to be.

Why weddings? Simple. People want to document their special day, and have emotional memories that will last forever. I want to be able to produce something that does that without stress and intrusion that some others may inflict on a couples wedding day. Yes, that might sound a bit like a low blow to other photographers/videographers, but I don’t say it to be nasty, I say it because it is true – I should explain.

If someone studies ‘art’ and becomes a photographer/videographer then they might have a particular attitude towards their art work and creative process. Thats great if you are producing images for an exhibition, making a film, commercial or shooting for a magazine. But thats not what your wedding is. Your wedding is about you, your loved ones, and having a fun/enjoyable day (or at least that is my idea of a wedding). So in my opinion the professionals you hire to help you on that day should fit into it, not expect everyone to fit into their world of ‘art’.

The photographer we hired for our wedding was bossy, miserable and tarnished an otherwise perfect day – and we paid him a ton of money for the pleasure. I have seen this time after time for other couples, and as I have learnt more about the technical/creative aspect of image taking I can’t understand why they feel this is the way to go about it. Lets be honest, what is likely to look best, hundreds of photos of a couple who have been worn out posing, moving, fake smiling and fake kissing for a couple of hours, or a couple madly in love, asked to be natural in front of someone who has a creative mind but likes to produce interesting, unique moving and still images.

So I wanted to give couples that option. Hire us and you get friendly people just like you, who have impeccable organisation, communication and decision making skills, super reliable, and want you to enjoy your day while we capture it – oh and they also know how to make great films and take great pictures. Or you you hire someone who probably doesn’t care if you have a good day, but they will give you a lot of nice looking photo’s identical to the ones they take of everyone else week in, week out. Honestly, if you prefer the second option then we would encourage you to choose someone like that.

And thats it. We love what we do and we hope it shines through in the stories get to tell, and we feel privileged to get to do this for a living.