Jess & Tom | Lyde Court, Herefordshire

4 Jan

Written By Oliver Holder

Jess and Tom in an enormous shower of colourful confetti at Lyde Court in Herefordshire

Jess & Tom

Lyde Court · Herefordshire

A Documentary Wedding Story

A humanist ceremony in a Herefordshire barn a year after the legal one — a gold sequinned dress, the most comprehensive confetti shower I have photographed, coloured smoke in a wheat field and a first dance that finished everybody off.

The Morning

I first met Jess and Tom in August 2020, when they married legally in a very small ceremony indeed. This was the proper one, twelve months later, with everybody there.

Jess works in entertainment, and you can tell within about four seconds of seeing the dress — gold, sequinned, and entirely unbothered by convention. The morning was loud, funny and completely without nerves.

Jess having her hair done in front of the mirror on the morning of her Lyde Court wedding

Jess’s sequinned wedding dress hanging before the ceremony at Lyde Court

Jess reading a card from Tom on the morning of the wedding

Black and white photograph of Tom and a groomsman getting ready

Jess and a bridesmaid laughing during preparations at Lyde Court

Jess in her sequinned wedding dress in the window light

Jess standing in the doorway in her gold sequinned wedding dress

Jess and her bridesmaids celebrating before the ceremony at Lyde Court

A Humanist Ceremony in the Barn

Lyde Court sits in the Herefordshire countryside just north of Hereford, and the ceremony barn is stone-walled, timber-roofed and open at one end to the fields. They chose a humanist ceremony, which meant it was written for them rather than read at them.

There was not a dry eye in the room, mine included. A humanist ceremony is a gift to photograph for exactly that reason: nothing is on rails, the couple face the room rather than the front, and every reaction is on show instead of hidden behind the back of somebody’s head.

Guests seated in the stone barn for the humanist ceremony at Lyde Court

Black and white photograph of Tom waiting before the ceremony at Lyde Court

Jess and Tom sitting together during their humanist ceremony at Lyde Court

Jess and Tom facing each other during the ceremony in the barn at Lyde Court

The Confetti

And then, without question, the most comprehensive confetti moment I have ever photographed. Not a polite handful each — a genuine blizzard, from both sides, for long enough that I ran out of frames before they ran out of confetti.

Jess and Tom walking back through the barn after their ceremony

The Afternoon

The rest of the afternoon unfolded the way the best rural weddings do: guests spread across the lawn, giant Jenga collapsing repeatedly, and no timeline anyone was seriously enforcing.

A barn like this is a lovely thing to photograph a reception in, because the light is entirely natural until the sun drops and then entirely festoon bulbs, and the switch between the two happens over about twenty minutes. Getting that transition right is most of the job in the evening.

Guests on the lawn outside the stone barns at Lyde Court in Herefordshire

Guests playing giant Jenga in the grounds at Lyde Court

The barn at Lyde Court lit with bunting and festoon lights during the reception

Lyde Court is one of the better barn venues in the west — stone rather than steel, open to the fields, and surrounded by countryside that gives you somewhere to go when the light turns. If you are choosing a venue, the guides cover the places I photograph most often, and there is more work like this in the portfolio.

Venue guides View the portfolio

Speeches

The speeches were beautiful — genuinely moving, and funny in the places they needed to be.

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 has heard it before and is already going, the guest holding it together badly, the table at the back that has entirely lost composure.

A speech being given in the barn at Lyde Court

Black and white photograph of Jess laughing during the speeches

Jess and Tom listening to the speeches in the barn at Lyde Court

Black and white photograph of guests during the wedding breakfast at Lyde Court

Smoke, and a Wheat Field

There was a beatboxing guitarist, which is exactly as good as it sounds. And then, as the light went gold, everybody walked out into the wheat field with coloured smoke grenades — which is a very silly idea and produced some of my favourite photographs of the year.

Smoke is unpredictable and lasts about ninety seconds. You pick a direction relative to the sun, get low, and let people move through it.

Black and white photograph of a musician performing at Jess and Tom’s wedding

Black and white photograph of guests watching a performance in the field

Guests setting off coloured smoke grenades in the wheat field at Lyde Court

Jess and Tom kissing in the wheat field at Lyde Court at sunset

First Dance and the Party

Possibly the most emotive first dance I have photographed, and then a barn full of people who had waited a year longer than they should have had to. It did not wind down so much as run out of night.

A note on photographing a barn in the evening, since it comes up a lot: the moment the sun goes the room is lit by festoon bulbs, which are warm, low and about four stops darker than daylight. Putting flash into that undoes the whole atmosphere. The alternative is to work wide open at high ISO and accept a bit of grain — which is why a good number of the frames from the end of this night are black and white. Grain looks like film in monochrome and looks like noise in colour.

Jess and Tom’s first dance in the barn at Lyde Court

A guest celebrating with her arms in the air on the dance floor

Black and white photograph of guests dancing in the barn at Lyde Court

Black and white photograph of guests singing together on the dance floor

Black and white photograph of guests dancing late into the night at Lyde Court

Guests celebrating together at the end of the night at Lyde Court

Jess and Tom, thank you. Twelve months late, entirely worth the wait, and about as far from a quiet country wedding as it is possible to get.

There is more work like this in the portfolio, and the venue guides cover the venues I know best.

Ceremony & reception: Lyde Court, Lyde, Hereford, Herefordshire HR1
Photography: Oliver Holder

Planning your own barn or countryside wedding? I would love to hear about it.

Get in Touch View Portfolio View Pricing

Oliver Holder