The Glass House Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at The Glass House

If you are getting married at The Glass House and you want a wedding photographer who already knows the room, that is us. It is on our doorstep. We are based at Poulton-le-Fylde, about ten minutes up the road, and the Glass House is the venue we would send you to look at if you asked us for somewhere modern and bright near Blackpool. We have photographed a couple here and flown the drone over the estate, and the aerial on this page is from that flight.

The whole day happens in one room. The ceremony, the wedding breakfast and the dancing all sit under the same timber beams, with mirrored bi-fold doors to divide the space while the staff turn it round. The walls are glass, floor to ceiling, with long bi-fold doors onto a private landscaped garden, and the view goes out over the golf course towards the Pennines. For a photographer that means one thing above everything else: light. On a bright day you can shoot the ceremony with no flash at all.

Because nobody has to move between rooms, there is no dead time. We use that. The twenty minutes other venues spend walking people from a ceremony room to a dining room is twenty minutes we spend with you in the garden or out on the course. It also makes Same-Day Prints easy if you add them: one of us edits at a table in the corner during the breakfast and the folders are handed over before the night is over.

Staining is a village between Blackpool and Poulton-le-Fylde, just off the M55, so guests from Lytham, Fleetwood and Preston all find it easily, and Blackpool hotels are a ten-minute taxi. We cover it on our standard wedding prices, with a half day from £599 and two photographers at every wedding. The drone can fly here, which is not true of much of the Fylde, and the details are further down.

Light and timing

The Glass House is bright all day, and that is its gift and its catch. The catch is reflections and hard sun. At midday in summer the glass wall throws light across the room from behind whoever is standing at the front, so for the ceremony we expose for faces and let the windows go bright, and we shoot the speeches from the sides rather than straight into the glass. Late afternoon is easier, as the light drops and comes in low. We plan the couple portraits for the hour before sunset, on the course or the terrace, and we come back in as the fairy lights on the beams take over. For the dancing we use off-camera flash bounced away from the glass so you do not get our own light reflected back. On a wet day the plan barely changes. The garden stays in every frame through the glass, the ceremony is indoors anyway, and the doors onto the garden give us a dry, covered edge to shoot from.

Drone

The drone can fly at The Glass House. The venue is about 5.8 km from Blackpool Airport, and the airport’s flight restriction zone reaches 2.5 nautical miles out, so the Glass House sits roughly 1 km outside it. Warton’s zone is further still, to the south. We have flown here before and the aerial on this page is from that flight. We still check Drone Assist on the morning, keep 50 metres from your guests and stay off the fairways while golfers are on them, and we refund the drone if weather stops us. Add the flyover for £149 alongside your photography. See our drone page for how it works.