Winter Gardens Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Winter Gardens

We are Lee and Dom, and if you are searching for a Winter Gardens Blackpool wedding photographer this is how we would work the building. The Winter Gardens opened on Church Street in 1878, it is Grade II* listed, and it is about 250 m from the seafront in the middle of town. It is not one room. It is a run of halls joined by corridors and stairs, and the rooms couples book are the Empress Ballroom, the Baronial Hall, the Spanish Hall, the Renaissance Room and the new Conference and Exhibition Centre. Which rooms you have booked changes everything about how we photograph the day, so tell us that before anything else.

The Empress Ballroom is from 1896, with a floor of 12,500 sq ft and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The brochure says it is licensed for ceremonies and caters for between 500 and 800 guests for a wedding, so it is the room for the big days. The Spanish Hall and the Baronial Hall were added in 1931, built by J C Derham with plasterwork by Andrew Mazzei. The Spanish Hall is done out as an Andalusian village, with balconies, red roofs and a blue sky painted above you, and it takes up to 200 for a wedding breakfast and 350 in the evening. The Baronial Hall is styled as a Jacobean banqueting hall, dark wood and heraldry, licensed for ceremonies and seating up to 200. The Renaissance Room is the small one, up to 100 for the breakfast, and it has windows, which none of the others really do.

Our usual plan here is the ceremony in the Baronial Hall, the drinks in the corridor and the Floral Hall, and the breakfast in the Spanish Hall or the Empress. Walking between them is part of the day, and the Floral Hall with its glass roof is the one place in the building with proper daylight, so we use it for the confetti and for the family groups. The Church Street entrance has the rotunda above it, which is worth a photograph on the way in.

Blackpool Promenade is a ten-minute walk down Church Street or Victoria Street. If the timings allow, we take the two of you to the front for twenty minutes, with the Tower up the road and the sea in front. Houndshill car park is about 150 m from the Coronation Street entrance, and Blackpool North station is ten minutes on foot, so guests from Preston and further afield can arrive by train and walk.

Light and timing

Most of the Winter Gardens is dim. The Empress, the Spanish Hall and the Baronial Hall have little or no daylight, and the house lighting is a mix of tungsten, LED and coloured washes. We shoot on fast lenses to keep the atmosphere and bring off-camera flash for groups, speeches and the dance floor, and we set the colour room by room so the Spanish Hall looks Spanish and the Baronial Hall looks like oak, not orange. The Floral Hall and the Renaissance Room are the daylight rooms, so anything that needs clean light goes there. The Conference Centre is modern and evenly lit. Outside, Church Street is in shade for much of the day because of the buildings, and the Promenade faces west with the sun setting over the sea. Wet weather costs you nothing here, because the whole day is under one roof and the Floral Hall gives the daylight look without going outside.

Drone

The Winter Gardens sits about 0.7 km north of the Blackpool Airport flight restriction zone, a 2.5 nautical mile circle from the airport at Squires Gate plus runway strips, up to 2,000 ft. There is nothing to be gained flying over a town-centre roof anyway. The aerial that makes sense is on the seafront, and the beach and Promenade south of the Tower are inside the zone, so the launch spot decides whether we need the airport’s permission, which takes 72 hours. We check Drone Assist on the day for Illuminations and Air Show restrictions and keep 50 m from anyone not with the wedding. With photography the flight is £149. Details on our drone page.