Olivia & Sam | The Mount Without Wedding
The Mount Without · Bristol
A Documentary Wedding Story
Childhood sweethearts, a morning in a Clifton townhouse, vows under a peeling teal ceiling in a former medieval church, speeches from the pulpit and a crypt full of people dancing until the small hours.
The Morning in Clifton
The morning started in a beautiful Airbnb up in Clifton, the sort of house with big windows and good light and enough room for everybody to be in the same place at once. Olivia got ready surrounded by family, coffee going cold on the side, the dress hanging by the window.
Olivia and Sam are childhood sweethearts, and you could feel that in the room. There is a particular warmth to a morning where half the people present have known the bride since she was small. Her dad came in, saw her, and did not manage a single word for a good few seconds. Those are the frames I am always waiting for.
The Ceremony
Then down the hill into the city and through the doors of The Mount Without. If you have not been inside, the main hall is genuinely difficult to describe. Stone columns down both sides, two tall gothic windows full of stained glass at the far end, walls of bare plaster and old paint, and above all of it a faded teal ceiling that looks like a sky somebody started and never quite finished.
Sam waited at the front and held it together right up until he did not. Olivia came down that long aisle with the whole room turned towards her, and the light through those windows did what it always does in there, falling in hard shafts across the stone.
I have written a full guide to photographing here if you are considering it yourself, covering the light through the day and how much time to allow: The Mount Without wedding photographer.
Confetti and the Churchyard
Out into the churchyard for confetti, which at the top of the Christmas Steps means a narrow path, a tight crowd and everybody within arm’s reach of each other. It makes for the kind of photographs where you can see six different reactions in one frame.
Portraits Above Bristol
We took twenty minutes and wandered out with the city underneath us. Bristol does this better than almost anywhere: you walk two minutes from a medieval church and suddenly the whole of the city is laid out below you, rooftops and cranes and hills behind.
No direction needed. Two people who have known each other most of their lives, standing somewhere high up, getting a moment to themselves before going back in.
The Mount Without is one of the venues I know best in Bristol, and this city is where I do most of my work. There is a full guide to photographing at the venue, and more on how I cover weddings across Bristol, on the pages below.
The Mount Without guide Bristol wedding photographyDinner and Speeches
Back into the hall, transformed. Long tables running the length of the room, candles down the middle of every one, the stained glass throwing colour across the far wall as the afternoon wore on.
The speeches were given from the pulpit, which is a detail I have not seen anywhere else and would recommend to anybody marrying here. It puts the speaker above the room, everyone looking up, and it turns a speech into something closer to an occasion. Olivia took her turn up there too.
Down Into the Crypt
And then downstairs. The crypt at The Mount Without is a low, vaulted, stone-walled room lit in whatever colour the evening calls for, and it is one of the best rooms for dancing anywhere in Bristol. The ceilings are close, the walls throw the sound back at you, and there is nowhere to stand about at the edges.
Olivia and Sam, thank you. A day that started quietly in a house in Clifton and ended with about a hundred people going properly for it underground. Not a bad way to begin.
If you are planning a wedding at this venue, or anywhere in the city, there is more on how I work in Bristol on my Bristol wedding photography page.
Oliver was a fab photographer at our wedding! Not only did he get stuck in and chat to guests and make everyone feel at ease, he had a phenomenal eye for what was going to make an amazing photograph. It felt as though he really understood how to balance taking more formal shots but also making sure that we spent the day with all our guests just having the best time. And then to top it all off, we got sent the previews the next morning! It was really special to start our first morning as a married couple looking back at some beautiful photos from the day before. Thanks Oliver!— Olivia Cerullo, Google review
Getting ready: Clifton, Bristol
Ceremony & reception: The Mount Without, Bristol
Photography: Oliver Holder