Shireburn Arms Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Shireburn Arms

If you are getting married at the Shireburn Arms and want a Shireburn Arms wedding photographer who knows Hurst Green, read on. The inn is on Whalley Road in the village, on the edge of the Forest of Bowland, with the Stonyhurst College estate over the wall and the Ribble down the hill to the south. It is a stone inn of five bays, Grade II, and the listing puts it in the mid-1700s though the venue calls it 17th-century. Either way it is old, it is a pub with a proper bar downstairs, and the back of it looks out over the Ribble Valley. Clitheroe is five miles away and Whalley about four.

It is a smaller venue than the big halls down the valley, and that is the point of it. The Ribble Room is the wedding room: licensed for up to 110, overlooking the gardens with the valley beyond, used for the ceremony and then turned round for the breakfast. Drinks go out on the south-facing terrace and gardens. The evening takes up to 150 with a private bar and the games room, and there are 21 bedrooms upstairs with three suites, the best one held for the two of you.

We are two photographers as standard, Lee and Dom, and at the Shireburn that means one of us is upstairs with whoever is getting ready in the suite while the other is in the bar with the other side and the early guests. Full Day Shireburn Arms wedding photography is £1,049 on a weekday and £1,295 at the weekend, and for a smaller afternoon wedding the Half Day from £599 covers the ceremony, the groups and the drinks. It is all on the prices page. We are based in Blackpool and cover the Ribble Valley.

Light and timing

The terrace and gardens face south, so they are in sun from late morning to evening and the valley is lit in front of you rather than behind. That is lovely for the drinks reception but hard on faces at two in the afternoon in July, so we turn you slightly off the sun for the groups and use the edge of the building for shade for the portraits. The Ribble Room has its windows on the garden side, so the light is from one direction; we expose for faces and let the windows go bright, and we bring a small flash for the signing if the day is dull. The bar and the low rooms downstairs are dark and cosy, and we use flash bounced off the ceilings there and in the evening. Sunset drops to the west along the valley and the terrace is the spot for it, usually between the speeches and the first dance. The rain plan is the Ribble Room windows, the bar and the stone porch with a brolly. We bring two cameras each, flash and a mono light for the first dance.

Drone

The Shireburn is clear on airspace: there is no flight restriction zone within 25 km, with Warton aerodrome about 28 km to the west and Blackpool Airport about 37 km. The thing to know is next door. Stonyhurst College owns a 1,000-acre private estate that runs from the village to the Hodder and Longridge Fell, and we have found no published drone rule for it, so we treat it as private land and fly over the inn’s own garden and the valley side, not over the college. The shot is the inn on its ridge with the Ribble Valley below and Pendle Hill in the distance. The drone is £149 added to your photography.