The Ned Hotel Wedding Photographer, London

The Ned sits at 27 Poultry in the heart of the City of London, opposite the Bank of England and two minutes from Bank Underground station. The building was designed in 1924 by Sir Edwin “Ned” Lutyens for Midland Bank, and the hotel takes its name in his honour. Soaring verdite columns, intricate stonework and an extraordinary sense of scale — it is not hard to see why it holds Grade I listed status.

The building stood empty for eight years before Nick Jones, the founder of Soho House, took it on. It reopened in 2017 with 250 bedrooms, ten restaurants, a members’ club, a rooftop pool, a spa, and an entire events floor given over to weddings and private celebrations. For the film fans: it appeared in the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger, back when it was still a working bank.

Weddings at The Ned take place on the events floor, which is yours for the day. There are four licensed rooms, and which one you are in changes the photographs more than anything else about the day.

The Tapestry Room is the one most couples picture: panelled walls, the tapestries it is named for, and chandeliers low enough to sit in frame above the aisle. It is warm and dark, which means the photographs have real atmosphere but very little margin — I work it wide open and close to the light.

The Saloon is the opposite. Pale, bright and full of daylight, with green leather chairs and tall windows, it is the easiest room in the building to photograph and the one I would choose for an early afternoon ceremony. The Drawing Room and the RWB Room are smaller again and suit a genuinely intimate wedding.

Capacities from The Ned’s current wedding brochure. The two terraces hold around 70 standing each for drinks.

Walking into The Ned for the first time is genuinely something. The scale of the place does half the work, but what makes it photograph so well is the range: within about sixty seconds of each other you have a bright terrace, a pitch-dark panelled dining room, a spiral staircase and a marble hall. Most venues give you one look. This one gives you five.

The spiral staircase is the shot everybody wants, and it deserves the reputation — perfectly symmetrical, and completely different depending on whether you shoot down it or up through it. It takes about four minutes.

Then there is the terrace. On a clear day the view of St Paul’s is genuinely cinematic, and as a backdrop for couple portraits there is not much in London to beat it. It works in the middle of the day, it works at golden hour, and it works in the blue half hour after sunset when the dome lights up.

My approach during the ceremony is to be as unobtrusive as I can be. I work from the edges, I do not use flash, and I try to make sure that by the time you walk back down the aisle nobody could tell you where I had been standing. The ceremony photographs are the ones couples come back to most often years later, and they only work if nobody is performing for the camera.

Because the events floor is self-contained, the walk out of the ceremony lands straight into the drinks reception. There is no bus, no shuffle across a courtyard, no fifteen minutes of momentum draining away. It is one of the quiet advantages of a hotel wedding and it shows in the photographs.

I will usually steal you away for about twenty minutes during the drinks reception. No guests watching, no posing, no list of shots to work through. I give you something to do rather than something to look like — walk towards me, tell them the thing you were going to say later — and let the rest happen.

At The Ned there is also the City itself. Step out of the front door and you are on the junction at Bank, with the Royal Exchange and the Mansion House on your doorstep. Ten minutes outside gives you something no other London venue can, and on a Saturday the streets are quiet.

The Ned’s kitchens are as celebrated as any in the City, and with ten restaurants in the building the catering at a wedding here is not like anywhere else. The long tables in the Tapestry Room, lit by candles and those chandeliers, are one of my favourite rooms in London to photograph a dinner in.

This is where the day becomes pure documentary. No direction, no setting anything up, just being in the right place. The speeches at The Ned are always good value — the room is intimate enough that everybody can hear, and close enough that you can photograph the reactions rather than just the speaker.

One practical note worth knowing: the dining rooms are dark. Beautiful, but dark. I shoot the evening on fast prime lenses and a little bounced light rather than lighting the room, so the photographs still look like the room you were actually in.

I am on The Ned’s recommended supplier list, which the events team share with couples once a date is booked. In practice what that means is that I know the building: which corridor has the good light at four o’clock, which corner of the terrace works when it is raining, and how long it really takes to move a hundred guests from the Saloon to dinner.

It also means I have worked alongside the in-house team many times. They are calm, experienced and genuinely good at their jobs, which lets me concentrate entirely on the photography. You are not obliged to use anybody from the list — if you have found my work first, simply tell your planner you have already booked a photographer.

Put the speeches before the meal if you can. The rooms are candlelit and the light does not change much through the evening, so it is less about daylight than it is about everybody relaxing. Speeches first means your speakers enjoy dinner and the room warms up early.

Build in ten minutes for the staircase and the terrace, separately. They are at opposite ends of the building. Twenty minutes total covers both comfortably; fifteen means rushing one of them.

Ask about the terrace on the day. Which terrace is available can depend on what else the hotel has on. It is worth confirming with your planner the week before rather than assuming.

Plan for the City being empty. Saturday in EC2 is deserted, which is a gift — you can photograph in the middle of Threadneedle Street. Friday weddings are a different proposition and worth discussing in advance.

The Ned is one of a handful of London venues I photograph regularly. If you are still choosing, these are the others I have written up in the same detail, and there is a wider selection of London weddings in the portfolio.

Venue guide Brunswick House Wedding Photographer Venue guide Marylebone Town Hall Wedding Photographer Across the city London Wedding Photography

Brunswick House in Vauxhall is the opposite of The Ned in almost every way — a Georgian house crammed with salvaged chandeliers and mismatched antiques. Marylebone Town Hall is where a lot of London weddings begin, and pairs beautifully with a reception somewhere like The Ned. Everything else sits on my London wedding photography page.

Four full days at The Ned, start to finish — the whole story of each one:

The Ned Hotel Jay and Spike The Ned Hotel Jess and Tom The Ned Hotel Jade and Adam The Ned Hotel Jen and Rich