Nice pictures, I like both of them, but if I had to choose I would go with the B/W one due to I love the strong front natural light and the showing of the back of her dress. Again great shots.
I actually composed a lot of the shots that day with the back of the dress showing because the bride had gone out of her way to let me know she *really* liked the back of the dress and wanted many photos with it...
HI. I like them both. But the b&w feels more intimate. Perhaps it's because the shot is physically "closer" to the bride. I like the steps image, but there's something amiss. Maybe the top is cropped to close to her head. I'd like to see a bouqet in her hanging hand. But very nice. Just a personal comment.
I prefer the B/W here. There is a bright spot on her left hip that keeps drawing my eye to the center of the color photo, and probably has something to do with my reaction to the picture. I do think the idea with the steps is a good idea, though.
Your original picture gives me a very artistic, painterly feeling to it - however the face area is too well-defined and too sharp for a painting, so I went ahead and applied some soft focus glow to the subject.
There is a large expanse of darker colors at the bottom (stairs) which goes well to anchor the subject (though I like bgundu's first edit as well). To make the bottom part not so overbearing, since the picture is a little too bottom-heavy, I masked out the subject and applied a sharp reduction in mid-tone curves (U-shaped curve, but tilted 45 degrees to the left) to darken the natural yellows in the wall to match the stairs. Hopefully this is pleasing to most people?
Addenum: I did a very rough job for the masking process, so the subject edge definitons and falloff isn't that nice.
