Lancaster House Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Lancaster House

Couples searching for a Lancaster House Hotel wedding photographer usually have the whole day booked in one place, and that is the strength of this hotel. You get ready upstairs, you marry in the Dalton Suite, you eat and dance in the Bowland Suite, and everyone walks to bed. It sits at Bailrigg on the south edge of Lancaster, next to the university, three minutes from junction 33 of the M6, which makes it easy for guests coming up from Preston and the Fylde or down from the Lakes.

It is a modern hotel, not a country house. English Lakes, the Berry family firm behind Low Wood Bay on Windermere, opened it in 1991 and added the banqueting suite and 19 suites in 2005. There are 79 bedrooms and four apartments, free parking, and the Sandpiper Health Club with a 50-foot pool and an outdoor hot tub on the decking, which is where a lot of guests end up the morning after. Lancashire County Council approves it for civil ceremonies, and the registrars come from Lancaster.

The two wedding rooms do different jobs. The Dalton Suite is the smaller one, 14 metres by nearly 9, with windows that give it proper daylight; it takes a ceremony of up to 120 or a breakfast of 110, and it divides into two halves for a wedding of 40. The Bowland Suite is the big room, 22 metres long, for weddings of 28 to 180 seated. A wedding of a hundred or more tends to use both: ceremony in the Dalton, then through to the Bowland for the breakfast and the evening, which gives the staff time to turn the second room round while you are outside with a drink.

For photographs the hotel gives us the lawns, the entrance porch, the foyer and the Sandeman Bar with its open fire. On a dry day the drinks go out onto the terrace and the lawns, and that is where the groups happen. On a wet one, the bar and the foyer have enough character for the families, and the suite windows give us the light we need for the couple.

Light and timing

The Dalton Suite has decent daylight from its windows, and a Samantha Broadley wedding here was photographed without flash for the ceremony. The Bowland Suite is a large function room with its own lighting, so for the breakfast and the first dance we bring flash and set it up before you come in. Outside, the lawns and terrace are open to the sky, and the terrace roof gives you shade when the sun is overhead, which is why we put the groups there in summer. We have not found a published aspect for the terrace, so on your pre-wedding visit we walk the grounds with you and pick the sunset spot for your date. Wet weather is well covered: the porch, the foyer and the Sandeman Bar all work indoors.

Drone

Flying is possible here. No flight restriction zone. The Heysham power station zone (EG R444) is about 5 km to the north-west at its nearest edge. The hotel publishes no drone policy, so we clear it with the co-ordinator. We check Drone Assist on the day, keep clear of guests, and refund the drone if the weather or permission stops us. Add the flyover for £149 with photography.