Roisin & Niall | Screen on the Green & The Depot N7
Screen on the Green · The Depot N7
A Documentary Wedding Story
A wedding in a working Islington cinema, a surprise film neither the bride nor the photographer knew about, a Routemaster north through the city, and a warehouse reception at The Depot N7 that nobody left early.
The Morning
Islington on a bright morning, and two separate rooms full of people getting slowly, happily ready. Niall and his groomsmen were doing the thing groomsmen always do — standing about looking smart and pretending not to check the time. Roisin was being buttoned into a lace dress by her mum, which is a job that takes four hands and about ten minutes and produces some of the best photographs of the day.
Then out onto Upper Street, where the cinema had already put their names up in lights. ROISIN AND NIALL — ENDGAME. I have photographed a lot of London weddings. I had never seen a couple arrive to find themselves on a marquee before.
The Ceremony at Screen on the Green
Screen on the Green is an Everyman cinema on Upper Street, and it is one of the more unusual places in London to get married. The aisle is the aisle between the seats. The guests sit where the audience sits. Instead of an altar there is a stage, a red curtain, and a screen the size of a wall.
It is also, in photographic terms, properly dark — a room designed to have no daylight in it at all. That is a real constraint and it is also the whole appeal: everything glows, nothing is flat, and the neon on the back wall throws colour across the whole room. I worked it wide open and did not use a flash once.
What nobody had told me — including, it turned out, Roisin — was that Niall had made a film. After the vows the lights went down properly and a montage came up on the screen: a mash-up of their favourite shows cut together, up to and including Monica with a turkey on her head. A whole cinema of people laughing in the dark at somebody’s wedding. I have not photographed anything else like it.
Out onto Upper Street
Married, and out through the front doors under their own names. Upper Street carried on around them exactly as it always does, which is the best thing about a city wedding — the day does not happen in a bubble, it happens in the middle of everything.
Then a red Routemaster, because of course, and a twenty-minute ride north to The Depot N7 — a converted warehouse tucked down a cobbled mews off North Road, a couple of minutes from Caledonian Road and ten from King’s Cross.
There is more on how I work across the city, and the venues I know best, on my London wedding photography page.
The Reception at The Depot N7
The Depot N7 is a converted warehouse on Carpenter’s Mews, just off North Road in N7 — exposed brick, tall factory windows, steel columns, greenery hanging from the ceiling and long tables running the full length of the room. After the deliberate darkness of the cinema it was a shock of daylight, and it made the two halves of the day feel like two different films.
It runs over three levels — the ground floor, a mezzanine that looks straight down over the tables, and a loft above that — which is a gift to a photographer. You can shoot the whole room from above during dinner and then be back down among it thirty seconds later. The building seats around 180 and holds 280 standing, so Roisin and Niall’s wedding breakfast had room to breathe with the dance floor already waiting behind it.
Canapés and drinks in the cobbled courtyard, then speeches given from the staircase so the whole room could see. They were very funny and quietly devastating in the way the best ones are, and the reaction shots down the tables were better than the speeches.
One practical thing worth knowing if you are looking at it: The Depot N7 is not licensed for civil ceremonies, so the legal bit has to happen somewhere else first — a register office, a licensed London venue, or in this case a cinema on Upper Street ten minutes down the road. Far from being a problem, it is what gave this day its shape: two completely different rooms, a bus in between, and a reception that started the moment everyone walked through the door.
Planning your own wedding at The Depot N7? It is one of the best rooms in north London for a warehouse-style reception — daylight all afternoon, three floors to work with and a staircase that makes speeches easy to photograph. Because it is not licensed for ceremonies you will need a legal ceremony elsewhere first, and there are guides to the London venues I know best below.
London wedding photography Venue guidesThe Dance Floor
First dance, and then no let-up. This is the part of a wedding where documentary photography earns its keep, because there is nothing to set up and nothing to direct — you just have to be in the right place, close, and quick.
Roisin and Niall, thank you. A cinema, a bus, a surprise film and a room full of people who did not sit down. That is about as good as a London wedding gets.
Planning something in London that does not look like anybody else’s wedding? Those are my favourite ones. Have a look at the portfolio and then tell me what you are thinking.
Ceremony: Screen on the Green, Upper Street, Islington
Reception: The Depot N7, Carpenter’s Mews, North Road, London N7
Transport: Routemaster bus
Photography: Oliver Holder