Lytham St Annes Wedding Photographer

Getting married in Lytham St Annes

Lytham St Annes is two towns that grew into each other, and they still feel different on a wedding day. Lytham is the older one, Georgian and Victorian, with the Green running along the estuary and the windmill in the middle of it. St Annes was laid out in the 1870s as a resort, with a pier, a long sandy beach and dunes behind it. Between the two is Fairhaven, with its lake and the white church. All of it is flat, open to the west and within a mile of the sea, which is why the light here is so good late in the day.

As a Lytham St Annes wedding photographer we spend a lot of Saturdays here. We are Lee and Dom, based in Poulton-le-Fylde on the other side of Blackpool, about twenty-five minutes up the coast road. There are always two of us at a wedding, one with each of you while you get ready and one at each end of the room during the ceremony. Travel is free within 10 miles of our base and 50p a mile after that, and Lytham is close to the line, so ask and we will tell you exactly what it comes to for your venue.

Lytham: the Hall, the Green and the windmill

Lytham Hall is the big one. A Grade I Georgian house by John Carr of York, finished in 1764, at the end of a mile-long drive through 78 acres of parkland. Ceremonies are in the Gold Room for up to 60 guests, and the Hall does daytime weddings only, so the reception is somewhere else, usually in town. That suits us. You get the house and the park for the ceremony and the portraits, then a ten-minute drive to the Clifton Arms or a marquee for the party. The park is open to the public, so there will be dog walkers, but the lime avenue and the front of the house are quiet enough.

The Clifton Arms on West Beach is the hotel on the Green, red brick from 1840, with bay windows looking south over the estuary. Ceremonies are in the Clifton Suite, whose bay looks straight at the windmill. From the front door you are on the Green in thirty seconds, which is the easiest couple portrait in Lancashire: the windmill, built in 1805, the old lifeboat house next to it, and the Ribble behind. At low tide the estuary is sandbanks and sky all the way to Southport. At high tide it is water to the horizon. We check the tide for your date, because they are two different photographs.

Lytham itself is worth a wander with a camera. Clifton Street has the shops, Lowther Gardens on West Beach has the Victorian bandstand and the rose beds, and the Lowther Pavilion next door is a theatre that does functions. In July the Green hosts Lytham Festival for about ten days and the whole front is stages and fences, so if you are marrying in Lytham in early July, check the dates before you plan the portraits.

St Annes: the pier, the beach and the Grand

St Annes faces the sea properly, where Lytham faces the estuary. The pier opened in 1885 and the beach either side of it is wide, flat sand backed by dunes that are now a nature reserve. The Grand Hotel on South Promenade is a red-brick Victorian hotel from 1897 with corner turrets and a Jacobean-style staircase that photographs well from above. Walk out of the Grand, cross the prom, and you are in the dunes in two minutes. Marram grass, pale sand and a west-facing sunset. In summer the sun goes into the sea at half past nine, so evening portraits here are a late job, and worth it.

The town centre is St Annes Square and the Garden Street end of the promenade, with the Victorian gardens by the pier and the putting greens. Fylde Council’s Town Hall is here too, on St Annes Road West, and it is the register office venue for most civil weddings in the borough. More on that below.

Fairhaven and the lake

Between the two towns, Fairhaven Lake is a boating lake opened in 1892 with the estuary on one side and the White Church, St Paul’s, on the other. The lakeside path is flat, there is a café and the sea wall gives you the Ribble at your back. It is the spot we use when the ceremony was at the Town Hall or the library and you want water in the photograph without going onto the beach in heels.

The light, the wind and the tide

Everything on this stretch of coast faces west or south-west. For a summer wedding that means the best light is after eight in the evening, during the dancing, and we will come and find you for ten minutes when it arrives. For an autumn or winter wedding the sun is low and golden all afternoon and gone by four, so we take the couple portraits straight after the ceremony. The wind off the estuary is constant. Veils, loose hair and order-of-service sheets all need holding. The tide matters for the Green and the beach: at a big spring tide the estuary comes up to the sea wall, and at low water it is a mile of sand. Both work. We just need to know which one we are getting.

Church weddings and the smaller rooms

A lot of Lytham St Annes weddings start in a church. St Cuthbert’s on Church Road is Lytham’s parish church, with a lych gate and a churchyard full of old trees that give you shade for the confetti. St Anne’s on the Sea, the church the town was named after, is on St Annes Road East with a spire you can see from the beach. Fairhaven has the White Church on Clifton Drive, St Paul’s, which is white faience outside and Byzantine inside and sits beside the lake. From any of them the Clifton Arms, the Grand or a marquee at Lytham Hall is ten minutes away, and we photograph the drive in between, because the wedding car on Clifton Street with the windmill ahead of it is a photograph people frame.

For a small wedding, the ceremony room at St Annes library takes twelve, and the Town Hall’s Reception Room takes 75. The Clifton Arms has the Library for sixteen and the Talbot Suite for 30. For those we offer the Micro and Register Office package, one of us for two hours on a weekday, which covers the ceremony, the signing and a walk to the Green or the lake for the portraits. The edit is the same as a full wedding.

The calendar

Two dates to know. Lytham Club Day is a Saturday in June, when the town parades from the Green with floats and a rose queen, and the roads round the centre are shut for the morning. Lytham Festival is about ten days in late June and early July, with the main stage on the Green and the whole front fenced off, so a Clifton Arms wedding that week needs the portraits planned round it. Royal Lytham & St Annes hosts the Open every few years and the town fills up for a fortnight. Outside those, it is a quiet place, and a weekday wedding in October gives you the Green, the beach and the light to yourselves.

Drone flying in Lytham St Annes

This is the hardest place on our patch to fly. Blackpool Airport at Squires Gate has a flight restriction zone that covers the whole of the St Annes seafront, and BAE Systems Warton has one that reaches over the estuary just south of Lytham Green. Lytham Hall is inside the airport zone and the Grand is too; the Clifton Arms sits between the two zones but Warton’s runway strip clips the shore by the jetty. Dom is a CAA-registered drone pilot and we apply for airport permission ourselves at least 72 hours ahead, but it is never guaranteed, so the drone is an add-on that we refund if we cannot fly. The drone page explains it.

How we work a Lytham wedding

Most Lytham St Annes weddings we photograph start with the two of you getting ready in separate places, often a house in Ansdell or a room at the Clifton Arms, so having two photographers means nobody misses their morning. One of us is at the venue early for the room before the guests arrive. After the ceremony and the confetti we take you out for fifteen minutes, then we are back for the drinks and the candid stuff, which is most of what people end up framing. The sneak peek lands within 48 hours and the full gallery within six weeks. If you add Same-Day Prints, five, ten or 25 prints of the ceremony are on the tables at the wedding breakfast. Prices start at £599 and the prices page has the rest. To see if your date is free, use the date checker and we will confirm within 24 hours.