Lancaster Wedding Photographer

Getting married in Lancaster

Lancaster is half an hour up the A6 from us and it feels like a different county. Blackpool is flat and built for a night out. Lancaster is a stone city on a hill, with a castle at the top, a river at the bottom and the Bay opening out to the west. If you want a Lancaster wedding photographer who knows which way the Ashton Memorial faces at four o’clock and where to stand on the quay, this is us talking you through the whole patch, from Carnforth down to Scorton and across to Morecambe.

Start at the top. The Ashton Memorial is the big domed folly in Williamson Park, Grade I listed, run by the city council, with the ground floor licensed for 120 and ceremony slots at ten, twelve, two and four. The steps face west, so the terrace is in sun from midday and the sunset drops right in front of you over the Bay. It is bright and it is windy, so hold the veil, and the gallery looks out over the whole of Morecambe Bay to the Lakeland fells. We think it is the best ceremony room in the north of the county, and the park round it does the portraits without anybody having to get in a car.

South of the city, by the university, is Lancaster House Hotel on Green Lane at Ellel, a proper four-star with the Dalton Suite for up to 120 and the Bowland Suite for 200, free parking and bedrooms for everyone. Further down the A6 at Scorton is Wyresdale Park, Victorian estate barns beside a Gothic hall, with the Chapel inside or the walled Ceremony Garden out, the White Barn for the breakfast and a lake to the east of the barns, so in the evening you are backlit on the jetty with the water catching the sky. And out on the Lune estuary at Conder Green is The Locks at Pyes Mill, an 1820s canal mill beside Thurnham lock, where the lawn looks south over the water and the towpath looks west for the sunset.

North, past Carnforth, is Leighton Hall, the white Gothic house at Yealand with the fells behind it and Leighton Moss next door. Ceremonies are in the Music Room or the Hall, or outside in the walled garden or on the lawn, for up to 80. The front faces south-east, so the stone is lit from breakfast until early afternoon and in soft shade for the family groups later. It is the one venue in the area where the drone needs the owners’ written permission, and we sort that before the day.

The city and the Bay

Lancaster Castle is open now, with the prison gone, and the courtyard inside the John o’Gaunt gateway is a few minutes’ walk from the register office. Next door is the Priory, the parish church on the same hill, with a churchyard that looks straight out over the river and the Bay. If you are marrying in the Priory, the view from the west end is your portrait, and the walk down through the castle grounds is the second one. Below the hill is St George’s Quay, a line of Georgian warehouses along the Lune with the old Custom House in the middle. The quay faces north across the river, so it is evenly lit all day, and it gives you something nobody else in Lancashire has: a wedding photograph that looks like a port.

Then there is Morecambe. The Midland Hotel on the promenade is the 1933 Art Deco one, white and curved, built to face the Bay, and the stretch of prom in front of it is where the sunset happens. We will be honest about this bit, because it is the reason couples from Preston and Manchester come here to marry. The Bay faces west and north-west, and on a clear evening the sun goes down behind the Lake District fells with the sand and the water between you and it, and the whole thing turns gold and then pink for twenty minutes. In June that is about half past nine. In October it is half past six. Whatever the timings of your day, if we are anywhere between Lancaster and the prom and the sky is doing something, one of us will come and find you and we will nip out for ten minutes. It is the picture you will frame.

How we work a Lancaster wedding

There are two of us at every wedding, Lee and Dom, and round Lancaster the venues are spread out enough that it matters. At the Memorial one of us is with the guests on the steps while the other is with you in the car on Quernmore Road. At Wyresdale one of us is in the barn with the lads and the other in the hall with the dress. You get both ends of the aisle, and at the speeches one of us has the top table and the other has the faces.

The light is the thing we plan round. The Memorial’s hall is pale and tall and lit by big windows, so we photograph the ceremony without flash, and for an evening hire we bring our own lights for the first dance because the house lights are what you get. Leighton’s Music Room and Hall are old rooms with their own glow. Wyresdale’s Chapel is a stone barn with a log burner, lovely and dim, so we work with the candles and add a little flash from the side. None of this is yours to think about. We will tell you when we are stepping out and for how long, and fifteen minutes is usually all the couple portraits take, plus the sunset if we get one.

Lancaster is about twenty miles from our base in Poulton-le-Fylde. Travel is free for the first 10 miles and 50p a mile after that, so a Lancaster wedding adds a little to the quote and Carnforth adds a little more. Our wedding prices start at £599 for a half day on a weekday, always with both of us. A £100 deposit holds the date. We check the diary and confirm within 24 hours, you get a sneak peek within 48 hours of the wedding, and the full gallery, hand-edited and full resolution, within six weeks.

Two optional extras. The drone, flown by Dom, who is a CAA-registered pilot, gives you aerial stills and a short 4K film, about a minute long. Round Lancaster the thing we watch is the Heysham power station zone, which sits over the Bay to the north-west. The Memorial, Lancaster House and Leighton are well clear of it, Wyresdale is clear, and at Pyes Mill we stay east of the canal and never fly out towards the Bay. If the weather or the airspace stops us, the drone is refunded. And Same-Day Prints is a paid add-on of 5, 10 or 25 prints from the morning and the ceremony, edited and printed at the venue and handed over at the wedding breakfast, with the first-dance prints before the night is over.