Jade & Guy | Farnham Castle, Surrey
Farnham Castle · Surrey
A Documentary Wedding Story
A summer wedding at Farnham Castle in Surrey — vows in the Norman chapel, a magician during the cocktail hour, a bouncy castle the adults refused to give back, and a set of singing waiters nobody saw coming.
The Morning
Jade and Guy got ready at the castle, which meant the morning had none of the usual travel in it — just suppliers moving quietly through the courtyards making sure everything was where it should be, and two people in separate rooms getting slowly more nervous.
It is my favourite hour of any wedding day. Nothing has started, nobody is performing, and the light in those old brick rooms is soft enough that you never need to reach for anything artificial.
Farnham Castle
Farnham Castle has been standing since 1138, when Henry of Blois built it as the seat of the Bishops of Winchester, and it stayed in the hands of bishops for eight hundred years. What survives is a genuinely layered building: a Norman motte and the ruins of the keep, a medieval great hall, a Tudor brick gatehouse and a seventeenth-century staircase, all within a few steps of one another.
That layering is exactly why it photographs so well. Within a hundred yards you can move from raw Norman stone to Tudor brick to a panelled Jacobean interior, and each one gives you a completely different picture. The gatehouse arch alone — deep shadow inside, bright gravel and lawn beyond — is worth the trip.
The Ceremony in the Chapel
They married in the castle’s Norman chapel, which is small, stone and lit almost entirely from one side. Jade walked in to a string accompaniment and the room went completely silent.
A chapel this old is a technical problem and a gift at the same time. There is no room to move, the light falls in one direction only, and using flash would be both intrusive and wrong. So you find your one position, stay in it, and work with what is coming through the windows — which in a building with walls that thick is not very much, and is exactly why it looks the way it does.
Farnham Castle is one of the oldest and most varied wedding venues in Surrey — Norman stone, a Tudor gatehouse and a great hall, all in one site. If you are choosing a venue, the guides cover the buildings I photograph most often and what each one actually gives you on the day, and there is more work like this in the portfolio.
Venue guides View the portfolioConfetti and the Grounds
Confetti out in the courtyard, then a short walk with Jade and Guy around the grounds. Twenty minutes was plenty — when you are working with eight hundred years of architecture you do not need to go far to find something worth standing in front of.
A Magician, and a Bouncy Castle
The cocktail hour had a magician working the crowd, which is one of the better ideas I have seen — it gives guests something to do besides queue at a bar, and it gives a photographer thirty faces all reacting to the same thing at the same moment.
There was also a bouncy castle, which the children owned for approximately four minutes before the adults staged a takeover. And an ice luge, which arrived later and did exactly what an ice luge does to an evening.
Dinner and the Speeches
Dinner in the hall, and speeches that were properly, helplessly funny. Almost none of the frames I keep from a set of speeches are of the person speaking — they are of the room: the friend who already knows where this is going, the table at the back that has completely lost it, the mother of the bride reaching for a napkin.
Singing Waiters and the Party
Then the surprise Jade had been sitting on all day: the waiters clearing the tables put down their trays and started to sing. There is a particular expression on a guest’s face in the first two seconds of a singing-waiter routine that is worth photographing on its own, and it is in this set several times over.
First dance, then the room went blue and stayed loud until the end.
Jade and Guy, thank you. Eight hundred years of castle, a card trick, a bouncy castle, an ice luge and a room full of people who had no idea the waiters could sing. A properly good day.
There is more work like this in the portfolio, and the venue guides go into detail on the places I photograph most often.
Ceremony & reception: Farnham Castle, Castle Street, Farnham, Surrey GU9
Photography: Oliver Holder
Planning your own Farnham Castle or Surrey wedding? I would love to hear about it.
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