Grand Hotel St Annes Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Grand Hotel St Annes

We are Lee and Dom, and if you are after a Grand Hotel St Annes wedding photographer, this is how we would photograph a wedding there. The Grand is the big red-brick hotel at the southern end of South Promenade in St Annes, on the Fylde coast between Blackpool and Lytham. Rose Holloway had it built in 1897, when this was sand dunes at the end of the prom, and it was known as the golfers’ hotel because Royal Lytham was less than half a mile away. It is Grade II listed: three storeys of red brick and red sandstone with corner turrets under domed roofs, a Jacobean-style porch, and inside a Jacobean-style staircase, stained glass, mahogany screens and a dining room with moulded plasterwork. All of that is still there to photograph.

The hotel has 54 bedrooms in the main building and another 22 in the Grand TwentyTwo annexe, 50 m across the road, so a wedding party can take over the place and nobody needs a taxi. The Turret and Signature Turret rooms have full sea views through floor-to-ceiling turret windows, and they are where we would want you getting ready, because the light comes in from the west and the sea is in the window behind you. There is a leisure club with a pool and spa, Café Grand for the meal the night before, and free parking on site.

One thing to sort before you book the registrars. The hotel’s own website has no wedding page at the moment, and the Grand is not on Lancashire County Council’s list of approved ceremony venues for Fylde, although a trade directory still lists it as licensed. So ask the hotel directly whether the ceremony can happen in the building, or whether you marry at St Annes Library on Clifton Drive South or Fylde Town Hall and come to the Grand for the reception. Either works, but it changes the running order, so tell us which.

Across the road is the reason to get married here. South Promenade has the dunes, the beach and the Irish Sea, with St Annes Pier about 0.4 miles north and the sun setting over the water straight in front of the hotel. The dunes give you sheltered hollows out of the wind and long grass that goes gold in the evening. Twenty minutes over there and you have the portraits of the day.

Light and timing

The hotel faces west-south-west across South Promenade to the sea, so the bedrooms and the front rooms get afternoon and evening light and the sunset is in front of the building. The turret rooms are the brightest spaces for preparations. The interiors are Victorian, with dark wood and stained glass, so we shoot them on fast lenses and bring off-camera flash for the groups, the speeches and the dancing. The dunes are open sky with hollows of shade, which is the easiest light on the coast for portraits, and the beach is bright and even. The wind on St Annes front is steady most days, so we keep the outdoor sessions short and pick the hollows. Rain plan: the staircase, the porch and a turret window keep the day going without leaving the building.

Drone

The Grand is inside the Blackpool Airport flight restriction zone. The airport at Squires Gate is about 3 km north, and the zone is a 2.5 nautical mile circle plus runway strips, up to 2,000 ft, so the whole of St Annes seafront is covered. A flight here needs the airport’s permission, which we apply for ourselves through Air Portal at least 72 hours ahead. It can be refused on the day, so we never promise it. When it comes off, the aerial of the hotel, the dunes and the beach from the sea side is a cracking one. With photography it is £149. More on our drone page.