Mike & Katie | The Hurlingham Club, Fulham
The Hurlingham Club · Fulham · London
A Documentary Wedding Story
A summer wedding on the Thames at The Hurlingham Club in Fulham — an arrival by open-top Triumph, vows under the glass roof of the Palm Court, and forty-two acres of garden to lose an afternoon in.
The Morning, and a Triumph TR7
Katie spent the morning at her aunt’s house a few streets away — hair set, a card from Mike read twice, a flower girl attached to her side and refusing to be detached. It is my favourite hour of any wedding day, because nothing has started yet and everyone is entirely themselves.
Then the least ordinary arrival I have photographed in a while: her father’s orange Triumph TR7, roof down, engine loud, Katie holding her veil with one hand the whole way. You cannot plan a better entrance than a bride arriving in her dad’s own car.
Arriving at The Hurlingham Club
The Hurlingham Club sits on forty-two acres beside the Thames in Fulham — a Georgian house of 1760 with a great columned portico, and behind it lawns, rose gardens and croquet grounds that feel a very long way from central London despite being twenty minutes from it. It has been a private members club since 1869, and it retains the quiet, unhurried character of one.
For a photographer that setting is a gift and a discipline in equal measure. There is more ground than you can cover, the light on those lawns in high summer is brutal at the wrong hour and beautiful at the right one, and the house itself gives you white stucco, tall sash windows and deep shade under the portico — three completely different backdrops within thirty paces of each other.
A practical note if you are planning one: the Club has its own rules, and they are worth knowing early. Photography is permitted for your own wedding but not across the wider grounds while other members are using them, mobile phones are restricted in much of the building, and everyone — suppliers included — is expected to meet the dress code. None of it is difficult, but it does mean a photographer who has worked here before will spend the day photographing rather than negotiating.
The Ceremony in the Palm Court
The ceremony was held in the Palm Court, which is the room everyone remembers about a Hurlingham wedding: a glazed roof running the full length of the space, palms along the sides, and daylight coming down from directly overhead rather than in from the side.
That overhead light is the technical story of the whole day. It is soft, it is even, and it falls on everybody at once — which means you can photograph a ceremony here without a single artificial light and without asking anyone to move an inch. It also means the room has no dark corner to hide in, so you keep to the edges and stay still. As the sun came through the glass, Mike and Katie exchanged vows and then rings, and there was a kiss that arrived slightly earlier than the registrar was expecting.
The Hurlingham Club is one of a handful of London venues where the ceremony room does the lighting for you. If you are planning a wedding in the city, the London page has a lot more on how I cover a day here — register offices, private members clubs, Georgian townhouses and everything in between — and the venue guides go into detail on the individual buildings I photograph most often.
London wedding photography Venue guidesConfetti and the Gardens
Out into the gardens for confetti, then the long, loose middle of the day: drinks on the lawn, canapés circulating, a flower girl fully committed to the fountain, and guests spreading out across grass that has been mown to within an inch of its life since 1869.
We took twenty minutes with Mike and Katie along the rose garden path and back past the brick wall on the eastern side. That is genuinely all it takes at a venue like this — you are never far from something worth standing in front of, so there is no reason to keep a couple away from their own party for longer.
Dinner and the Speeches
Dinner was back under the glass, tables long and low-lit, and the speeches were the highlight of the day — heartfelt, properly funny, and containing more references to golf handicaps than strictly necessary.
Almost none of the frames I care about from a set of speeches are of the person speaking. They are of the room: the hat four seats down, the mother-in-law already crying, the friend who knows what is coming next and cannot keep a straight face.
The Party
The cake was cut, the first dance was danced, and then the evening did what evenings at this kind of venue always do — loosened completely. Jackets off, shoes off, everybody in.
Mike and Katie, thank you. A car with the roof down, a room made of daylight and a garden party that ran until the music stopped — not a bad way to spend a summer Saturday.
If you are planning something similar there is more on London wedding photography, and the venue guides cover the buildings I know best.
Ceremony & reception: The Hurlingham Club, Ranelagh Gardens, Fulham, London SW6
Photography: Oliver Holder
Planning your own Hurlingham Club or London wedding? I would love to hear about it.
Get in Touch View Portfolio View Pricing