Beeston Manor Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Beeston Manor

If you’ve booked Beeston Manor and you’re looking for a wedding photographer, here’s how the two of us would work your day. The Manor is on Quaker Brook Lane at Hoghton, between Preston and Blackburn, with 140 acres of fields and Beeston Woods round it and nothing else in sight. The original building is a 16th-century barn, oak beams and pink sandstone, and the two function rooms were added in 2000 to match it: the Oakland Room upstairs, where the ceremony goes, and the Woodland Room downstairs for the breakfast and the evening.

What we like about Beeston Manor as wedding photographers is that the whole day happens in one place and both of you can get ready on site. The Meadows is three suites across the grounds, Robin, Skylark and Barn Owl, with a courtyard and a hot tub, for the night before. The Nest next to it is the bridal lounge in the morning, with skylights over the dining area, which is lovely light for hair and make-up. The groom’s side has the Den in the main Manor, wood panelling and a hockey table. The two parties don’t bump into each other, and with Lee in one and Dom in the other, neither misses a thing.

Numbers are 125 for the day and 200 in the evening, with 14 en-suite bedrooms on site, including the Bridal Suite downstairs. The couple get the Dove Suite, with a balcony terrace and a private hot tub looking over the fields, and breakfast the next morning is in the Garden Room. Drinks after the ceremony go outside looking over the countryside, and that’s where we’d do the groups and the family photos while the canapés go round.

Both function rooms have views across the fields, and the Woodland Room has a conservatory on the side, so there’s daylight in the barn as well as the beams. Bridebook lists confetti, fireworks and open flame as allowed here, which matters for the evening: if you’re having fireworks, tell us and we’ll be set up on the lawn with the right lens.

A Saturday at Beeston Manor is a full day with both of us, £1,295, from the Nest in the morning to the barn dance at night. Everything is on our prices page. Same-Day Prints are an optional add-on from £69, handed over in the Woodland Conservatory during the turnaround.

Light and timing

The Nest’s skylights give soft top light for make-up and the dress, better than most hotel bedrooms. The Den is wood-panelled and darker, so Dom brings a flash on a stand and bounces it off the ceiling rather than firing straight at the lads. The Oakland Room upstairs has natural light and pale timber, which is kind to skin, so the ceremony is shot without flash. The Woodland Room is a barn: warm, beamed and dim by the speeches, so both of us run off-camera flash for the speeches and the dancing, kept low so it still looks like a barn. The conservatory is the bright corner for the cake and for prints. Outside, the fields are open and there’s no shade to speak of, so for a sunny ceremony time we’ll do groups with the sun behind you and wait for the softer light for the two of you. It’s open country, so there’s always a breeze. If it rains, the conservatory, the barn doors and the Meadows courtyard under an umbrella cover it.

Drone

Beeston Manor is made for the drone: 140 acres with the woods round it and the barn in the middle. The airspace is clear. Warton’s flight restriction zone is about 18.5 km west and Blackpool Airport’s about 28 km. The old BAE runway at Samlesbury, 3.8 km north-east, stopped flying years ago and closed in 2015. HMP Preston is about 6 km away, far outside the 400 m limit around prisons. We ask the venue’s coordinator, which is normal practice, and we don’t fly during the ceremony or over guests. The drone is £149 on top of your photography, and the shot is the barn and the lawn full of people with the woods and the fields rolling off towards Preston. More on our drone page.