Blackpool Wedding Chapel Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Blackpool Wedding Chapel

We are Lee and Dom, and the Wedding Chapel at Festival House is the venue we would pick for a small wedding in Blackpool. If you have booked it and you want a Blackpool Wedding Chapel wedding photographer who knows the building, this is how we work it. Festival House is the gold building on the seaward side of the Promenade, between the Tower and the sea, right next to the Comedy Carpet. dRMM Architects designed it, it was completed in December 2011 and it won a RIBA Award in 2012. The ground floor is a restaurant and the tourist information centre. The ceremony rooms are upstairs, and the whole thing is built from cross-laminated timber wrapped in gold stainless-steel shingles, which catch the light at sunset.

Blackpool Council runs it, and there are two rooms. The Tower View Room takes the couple and up to 60 guests, and the whole of one wall is a floor-to-ceiling window with the Tower in it. The Sea View Room is for the couple and up to 10 guests on the enhanced ceremony, or 5 on the standard one, and it looks out over the beach towards North Pier. Both rooms come with access to the private balcony for the couple and the photographer, and the council sells sunset weddings, Illuminations weddings and fireworks weddings during the World Fireworks Championship. That last one is worth knowing about if you like a show behind your vows.

This is a ceremony venue, so the reception is somewhere else. Most couples walk or tram it to a hotel on the Promenade, or head out of town to a pub or a restaurant. Our Micro & Register Office package was built for exactly this: two of us for two hours, the ceremony, the balcony, the beach and the family groups, and you have the pictures to show everyone at the meal. If the reception is a full afternoon and evening, Half Day or Full Day covers it.

The practical bits. There is no parking at the chapel, but the central car parks are about five minutes’ walk and there is a space outside the door for the wedding car to pull up. The trams stop alongside. The entrance is step-free with a lift to the ceremony rooms. Blackpool North station is a fifteen-minute walk, so guests from Preston and the rest of Lancashire can come by train.

Light and timing

The Tower View Room is lit by its window, and the window faces the Tower, so the light comes in from the side and behind you during the ceremony. We expose for faces, which means the Tower outside can go bright on a sunny day, and we take a second frame for the window. The Sea View Room faces the sea, west, so by late afternoon the sun is coming straight in and we shoot you against it with a touch of flash to fill. The balcony is open to the sky and the wind. The beach and the Promenade are west-facing, with hard light at midday in summer and a long sunset across the water, which is why the council sells sunset weddings. Illuminations weddings are after dark, and we bring a small flash so you are lit against the lights rather than a silhouette. Rain plan: the building has a covered entrance and a lift lobby, and the ceremony room itself gives a dry portrait with the Tower behind you.

Drone

Festival House is about 0.5 km north of the Blackpool Airport flight restriction zone, a 2.5 nautical mile circle from the airport at Squires Gate plus runway strips, up to 2,000 ft. The airport says flights between Central Pier and Starr Gate need its permission, and the beach in front of the chapel is right on the edge. The launch spot decides it, and if the spot is inside we apply through the airport 72 hours ahead. The Promenade is busy, and we have to keep 50 m from anyone not with the wedding, so a flight here means early morning or the off-season. A short aerial with photography is £149. More on our drone page.