A photographer from Rossendale has won a prize at the Great Northern Wedding Awards earlier this month.

The Great Northern Wedding Awards are the 'ideal opportunity' for engaged and married couples across the region to acknowledge and celebrate the skills and creativity of their own wedding suppliers.

This was the first Great Northern Wedding Awards since 2020, letting the industry get back on its feet after a turbulent couple of years, and is the sixth awards since they were originally launched in 2015.

Jules Fortune, a photographer based in Edenfield, was awarded the Highly Commended Wedding Photographer' award.

She said: "I'm absolutely thrilled to do a job that you absolutely love, and then to be honoured with a 'Highly Commended Award' is just wonderful.

"It's also a fantastic feeling to know that all my couples have taken the time to vote for me in these awards.

"The Great Northern Wedding Awards are not just based on a simple vote. Couples were asked to mark each nominee out of five for based on approachability, value for money, performance on the day and ease of booking.

"It's a real achievement for me and business."

This year, thousands of engaged or married couples voted for their favourite wedding businesses across 21 categories – from venues to videographers, from florists to photographers and everything in-between.

Each couple rated their wedding suppliers on attributes such as approachability, communication, ease of booking, on the day quality and value for money, giving an overall quality score plus providing valuable feedback to the businesses on their key areas of service.

Jules got her first camera for her 16th birthday, which then lead her to a photography degree.

She freelanced for many years and ran her own studio, before finding her niche in weddings 10 years ago.

Since then she has photographed over 500 hundred weddings in settings from pubs to castles.

The Great Northern Wedding Awards attracts entrants from across the region, mostly Lancashire and Greater Manchester, but also Cumbria, Merseyside and North Yorkshire.