Liv & Jack | Hadsham Farm, Oxfordshire

1 Dec

Written By Oliver Holder

Liv and Jack kissing beside the lake with the tipis lit behind them at Hadsham Farm

Liv & Jack

Hadsham Farm · Oxfordshire

A Documentary Wedding Story

An outdoor ceremony beside the lake at Hadsham Farm in Oxfordshire — tipis in a meadow, a pizza van in a field, and ten quiet minutes by the water while the party carried on behind.

The Morning

Liv was ready in good time and entirely unbothered, which is rarer than you would think. Jack was adequately nervous, which is exactly as it should be. Between them they had the morning about right.

These two should have been married a few years earlier, and were not, for reasons everybody reading this will remember. You could feel that in the room — a wedding that has been postponed carries a different weight when it finally happens.

Black and white photograph of Liv laughing during preparations before her Hadsham Farm wedding

Liv and her bridesmaids in their pyjamas on the morning of the wedding

Black and white photograph of Liv at the window before the ceremony

Liv having her make-up finished on the morning of her wedding at Hadsham Farm

Liv and her bridesmaids getting ready together before the ceremony

Liv laughing with her bridesmaids during preparations

Liv in her wedding dress in the beamed room before the ceremony

Black and white photograph of Liv’s father seeing her in her dress for the first time

Hadsham Farm

Hadsham Farm sits in the Oxfordshire countryside near Banbury — a working farm with tipis, a lake, and a great deal of open sky. It is a blank-canvas venue in the best sense: there is no house telling you what kind of wedding to have, just fields, water and a boardwalk out to the ceremony.

For a photographer that means one thing above all: you are entirely at the mercy of the weather and entirely rewarded by it. There is no fallback room with good light. On a day like this one, with high cloud and a low evening sun, it is about as good as English countryside gets.

Guests arriving at the tipis at Hadsham Farm in Oxfordshire

The boardwalk leading across the field to the ceremony at Hadsham Farm

A handwritten congratulations sign at the Hadsham Farm reception

A wooden place setting detail at the wedding breakfast

An Outdoor Ceremony by the Lake

The ceremony was outdoors beside the lake, under a circular floral arch, with the guests seated on the grass either side. Liv walked down through the meadow with her father and the whole thing took about twenty minutes.

Outdoor ceremonies are harder to photograph well than people assume. There is no roof to soften the light, so at the wrong hour you are fighting shadows under everybody’s eyes, and there is nowhere to hide — every position you take is visible to a hundred and fifty people. You work from behind and to the side, move only between moments, and stay low.

Liv and her father walking through the meadow at Hadsham Farm

Jack waiting with the guests before the outdoor ceremony at Hadsham Farm

Liv walking down the outdoor aisle with her father at Hadsham Farm

The outdoor ceremony beside the lake at Hadsham Farm under a circular floral arch

A detail of the rings being exchanged during the ceremony at Hadsham Farm

Black and white photograph of Liv and Jack walking back through their guests

Black and white photograph of confetti thrown over Liv and Jack at Hadsham Farm

Hadsham Farm is a blank-canvas tipi venue — fields, a lake and whatever you bring to it. They photograph beautifully and they ask more of your suppliers than a venue with walls does, because nothing is provided by default. If you are choosing a venue, the guides go into detail on the places I photograph most often.

Venue guides View the portfolio

Dinner in the Tipis

Dinner was inside the tipis, which is one of my favourite rooms to photograph a wedding meal in. The canvas softens the daylight coming through it and the poles give you a frame in every direction, so you can shoot down the length of a table and the picture holds together on its own.

The speeches were warm and 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 the punchline, the guest holding it together badly, the table at the back that has entirely gone.

Black and white photograph of guests around the table inside the tipi at Hadsham Farm

A speech being given inside the tipi at Hadsham Farm

Guests along the table during the wedding breakfast in the tipi

Personalised wine bottles on the table at the Hadsham Farm reception

Black and white photograph of guests laughing during the speeches

The father of the bride giving his speech in the tipi at Hadsham Farm

Guests listening to the speeches inside the tipi

Black and white photograph of the top table during the speeches

A guest reacting during the wedding speeches at Hadsham Farm

Black and white photograph of a guest during the wedding breakfast

Pizza, and the Lake at Dusk

Guests were fed continuously all day, and then, as the light dropped, possibly the best pizza I have eaten at a wedding arrived from a van in the field.

While the party carried on behind us I took Liv and Jack back down to the lake for ten minutes. The tipis were lit, the water was flat, and there was just enough light left in the sky to hold the frame. That is the whole reason to keep ten minutes back for the end of the evening — the light at that hour cannot be recreated at any other point in the day.

Black and white photograph of the pizza van serving guests at Hadsham Farm

Guests talking together outside the tipis in the evening at Hadsham Farm

Black and white photograph of Liv and Jack together in the evening

Black and white photograph of Liv in the meadow at Hadsham Farm

Black and white photograph of Liv and Jack beside the lake at Hadsham Farm

The Party

Back into the tipi, where it stayed loud until the end. A child owned the dance floor for a solid twenty minutes and no adult present had the heart to reclaim it.

One practical thing worth knowing about tipi weddings: the canvas is beautiful during the day and almost entirely dark at night, lit by whatever festoon bulbs you have hung. That is a huge drop in light over the course of about half an hour. It is why a good number of the evening frames in this set are black and white — at high ISO, grain reads as film in monochrome and as noise in colour, so the honest answer is to lean into it rather than fight it with flash.