Bernie & Naesan | Grantley Hall, Ripon
Grantley Hall · Ripon · North Yorkshire
A Documentary Wedding Story
A humanist ceremony at Grantley Hall near Ripon — a helicopter on the lawn, portraits in the Japanese garden, fireworks over Nidderdale and a party that carried on in the basement nightclub.
The Morning at Grantley Hall
Bernie and her girls took over one of the suites with hair, make-up and a bottle of something cold, looking out over gardens that had clearly been attended to that morning. Along the corridor, Naesan and the boys were working their way through a whiskey and a YouTube tutorial on how to hand-tie a bow tie, with mixed results.
I had met these two on a pre-wedding shoot in Greenwich months earlier, and I already knew what kind of day it was going to be. Some couples you have to draw out. These two arrived already at full volume.
A Humanist Ceremony
They chose a humanist celebration, which meant the ceremony was entirely theirs — the story of how they met, told properly, in front of everyone who had watched it happen. There were tears well before the vows, laughter immediately after them, and a room that went from silent to deafening in about a second and a half.
A humanist ceremony is a gift to photograph, because nothing is on rails. The celebrant moves, the couple face the room rather than the front, and the reactions are on show instead of behind the backs of everyone’s heads. You spend the whole thing watching the guests as much as the couple.
The Grounds, and a Helicopter
Grantley Hall sits in the Nidderdale countryside just outside Ripon, a Grade II* listed Palladian house of the 1680s that reopened in 2019 after a restoration of genuinely eye-watering ambition. Behind the formal frontage there is a spa, a Japanese garden, a long ornamental canal, and — four floors down — a nightclub. Yes, really.
It also has a lawn large enough to land a helicopter on, which is exactly what happened. The groomsmen were photographed beside it with the barely-contained delight of men who have just been told they are allowed to stand next to a helicopter.
What makes it work photographically is that the restoration kept the windows. The ceremony and reception rooms are tall, pale and glazed on two sides, so even on a grey Yorkshire afternoon there is enough daylight to work without putting a single flash up. The corridors are the opposite — panelled, dark, lit in pools — which gives you somewhere completely different to photograph without leaving the building.
Portraits in the Japanese Garden
The gardens here are the reason to build a timeline with twenty spare minutes in it. The Japanese garden gives you a red bridge, stone lanterns and deep green shade even at midday, and the ornamental canal running away from the house gives you a mirror the length of a cricket pitch. Both are a two-minute walk from the drinks reception.
We were out for about twenty-five minutes in total. That is all I ever want — long enough to get somewhere properly good, short enough that nobody feels they have been removed from their own wedding.
Grantley Hall is one of the more unusual venues in the north — a Palladian country house that also happens to have a spa, a Japanese garden and a basement nightclub. 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 the portfolio has more full wedding stories like this one.
Venue guides View the portfolioDinner and the Speeches
Dinner was under the great circular light fitting in the ballroom, and the speeches were genuinely, helplessly funny — the sort where the person speaking has to stop and wait for the room twice before finishing a sentence.
This is where a documentary approach earns its keep. Almost none of the frames I care about from a set of speeches are of the person speaking. They are of the room: the friend who has heard the story before, the mother already reaching for a napkin, the table at the back losing it completely.
Fireworks, and a Nightclub
The first dance, then everybody out onto the grass for a firework display over the Yorkshire countryside — guests silhouetted, phones up, the whole thing reflected in the canal.
And then downstairs. Grantley Hall has its own basement nightclub, which means the party does not wind down at midnight the way it does at most country houses; it simply relocates and starts again. Neon sign on the wall, drinks flowing, and a dance floor that had to be closed rather than emptied.
Bernie and Naesan, thank you. Whiskey and bow ties, a ceremony that had the whole room in bits, a helicopter, fireworks and a nightclub — you did not leave much on the table.
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: Grantley Hall, Ripon, North Yorkshire HG4
Photography: Oliver Holder
Planning a country house wedding of your own? I would love to hear about it.
Get in Touch View Portfolio View Pricing