Farington Lodge Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Farington Lodge

If you have booked Farington Lodge and you are looking for a wedding photographer, here is how we would do your day. Farington Lodge is a Georgian house on Stanifield Lane between Leyland and Preston, built in the 1830s for William Bashall, who owned the cotton mill down the road. Leyland Motors used it as a guest house for visiting directors from the 1930s until 1989, and the present owners have run it as a hotel since 1994. It takes one wedding a day, so the gardens and the house are yours.

The rooms matter here, because they are different from each other. The Garden Room is a bright classic room in the old house with big picture windows. The Jubilee Suite is the purpose-built function suite, opened in 2002, with its own entrance, lounge, bar and car park, and it is where most wedding breakfasts and evening parties happen. Then there is the Garden Pavilion out in the grounds, which is covered by the ceremony licence, so you can marry outside with your guests on the lawn.

The house itself is the backdrop. You arrive up the drive to a porticoed front door with Ionic columns, and inside there is an open-well staircase with turned balusters and plasterwork that Historic England thought worth writing down. The grounds are three acres of lawns, landscaped gardens and a patch of woodland, with a terrace outside for the drinks. The M6 runs along the eastern edge, which you hear a little in the gardens and never see in a photograph.

Farington is in South Ribble, four miles south of Preston and a short walk from Leyland station, so it is an easy venue for guests coming by train. It is about 45 minutes from our base at Poulton-le-Fylde. We cover it on our standard wedding prices, with a full day from £1,049 and two photographers at every wedding, and the drone can fly here.

Light and timing

Farington Lodge is easier on light than most country-house hotels, because the main rooms have big windows. The Garden Room and the other reception rooms in the old house are bright enough for a ceremony on daylight alone, and the Garden Pavilion is outdoors, so the question there is sun rather than shade. In the middle of a summer day we shoot the pavilion ceremony with the sun behind you rather than on your faces. The Jubilee Suite is a function room, with lower ceilings and evening lighting, so for the speeches and the first dance we use off-camera flash bounced high to keep it looking natural. The lawns are open and get the afternoon sun, and the sunset is west over the gardens, so the couple portraits go late. If it rains, the ceremony moves indoors to the Garden Room, the groups happen on the staircase and in the lounge, and we still get you outside under an umbrella for two minutes on the porch steps.

Drone

The drone can fly at Farington Lodge. Leyland is clear of the Fylde airspace problems: the edge of Warton’s zone is about 9 km to the west, and BAE Samlesbury’s about 10 km to the north-east. There is no airport, prison or restricted site within range. The M6 runs right along the east side of the grounds, so we launch from the lawns and keep the flight over the house and gardens, away from the motorway. We check Drone Assist on the day, keep 50 metres from your guests, and refund the drone if the weather stops us. Add the flyover for £149 with photography. See our drone page.