Newborn photos with 16-day-old Elle

Hannah and Ben met through mutual friends when they were just 16 years old, but lost contact for a few years after that.

By chance, they reconnected when they were 20 years old, and this time they stayed very much in touch, never to be parted again.

They had a big wedding planned for 2020 but the pandemic forced them to flex and change their plans.

They initially halved their guest list to 30 people to meet the restrictions at the time for an October 2020 wedding.

With just a few weeks to go, a new rule was announced which limited guests to 15 people, starting from 2 October.

So Hannah and Ben rang the church and the venue and brought the wedding forward to September so they could go ahead with their current guest list of 30 attendees.

The rules prevented group dancing indoors, so the newlyweds had their first dance on the terrace outside, then everyone cosied up to watch the film Notting Hill in the marquee together, while enjoying fresh pizza.

Although I thought that having so many restrictions and last minute changes would be stressful, Hannah told me that they’d been planning it for so long they just felt on top of it.

That’s a feeling that’s been echoed in their new life as parents: the lead-up through pregnancy gave them time to get everything in order that by the time Elle arrived they were more than ready to meet her.

Everything has been going really well so far, helped by the fact that Elle is a naturally very sleepy baby.

Hannah has been getting less sleep, however: purely because she cannot bring herself to tear her eyes away from her daughter, preferring to watch her for hours on end.

The couple also have a dog – two-year-old Oscar – who has quickly become a fond if furry big brother to Elle.

He initially wasn’t too happy about the noises made by the new arrival, but seems to have accepted that she won’t be going anywhere!

Now he likes to be close to her, making Hannah and Ben’s best moments so far the ones with all four of them snuggled up on the sofa.

Elle was initially going to be called Poppy, but that all changed at the last minute. 

The midwife told Hannah and Ben that she was looking forward to picking up her new puppy the following day, and was planning to name her Poppy.

They decided baby couldn’t have the same name as their midwife’s dog, so spent the first three or four days considering some alternatives before falling in love with the name Elle.

Happily, it’s all worked out well in the end, as mum and dad both agree that their daughter looks more like an Elle than a Poppy anyway.

And just as a rose would smell as sweet whatever it was called, so Elle is a tiny nugget of perfection who has made her parents’ world compete: her beautiful name is just the icing on the cake 🙂

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If you’re interested in newborn portraits or family photography in Bicester, Oxfordshire, please get in contact.

Sarah Plater AMPA is an award-winning qualified, certified professional newborn and family portrait photographer based in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

She is the Master Photographers Association Young Families Portrait Photographer of the Year 2022 and Newborn Photographer of the Year 2019 for the Central Region (covering Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire).