I ALWAYS thought that weddings where photographs are banned involved celebrities with lucrative magazine contracts.

But this is not always the case. An increasing number of couples are opting for so-called ‘unplugged weddings’, where guests are prevented from using mobile phones or iPads to take photographs, to stop them from blocking their professional photographer’s perfect shots.

The trend, which sees brides and grooms request that their guests not take pictures on the big day in case they get in the way of the photographer, has been on the rise since 2010.

I always thought the idea of a wedding was to have fun and enjoy yourself along with your guests. Those guests may have invested a considerable sum on getting there, on new clothing for the occasion and on wedding gifts. The least they should expect is to be able to take a few pictures to remember the day by.

I did not need an unplugged wedding. For a start, despite my best efforts to sell the exclusive rights, Hello magazine wasn’t interested. Secondly, we did not have a professional photographer.

Our handful of guests took pictures for us in the garden at the back of the register office. We ended up with around 20 nice photographs capturing the spirit of the occasion. They include my husband and I sitting on a bench, our guests milling about chatting, my sister-in-law laughing with her baby and my brother stroking a passing cat.

I’ve seen some lovely professional wedding photographs, but also many so stiff, formal and dull that they don’t reflect the natural exuberance of the day at all.

On a weekend break my husband and I stayed in a hotel in which a wedding was taking place. Throughout the day we saw the bride and groom posing for photographs, more photographs and even more photographs. As we ate lunch we saw them being positioned for pictures - this time on the sea front - and we spotted them again that afternoon as we went for a walk.

When I nipped out to the car at 10pm that night I found the main door to the hotel inaccessible due to the bride and groom - still in their wedding garb - having even more pictures taken.

The couple can’t have spent more than ten minutes with their guests all day. They missed the joy of their wedding party for a series of what looked like highly unnatural, staged images of themselves. I hope they were happy with the results. I think they’d have been better off having fun and encouraging family and friends to snap away on their mobiles.

Wedding photography must be up one of the most stressful jobs on the planet, up there with air traffic control and Brexit negotiator.

Couples are ridiculously demanding as they strive for ‘perfect’ images among hundreds of shots. Stories in the media about people being let down by their pictures are common.

Only this month one bride was ‘left furious’ after asking a professional photographer friend to take her photos and disliking the results. She hinted that it spoiled her day and took to a wedding shaming group (there is such a thing?) on Facebook to vent her anger.

My pictures may have been taken by family and friends, but we were happy with them. If you are going to have one, a wedding photographer should, by and large, be inobtrusive and merge seamlessly into the event. If guests want to snap away, let them. Any photographer worth his salt would simply tell them to move if they got in the way. And if anything goes wrong, at least you have photographic back up.