Kensington has some of the best wedding backdrops in London within a mile of each other: Kensington Palace, the Royal Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial and Holland Park. Here’s where I’ve worked, and how I’d plan a day around them.
Kensington Palace
Danielle and Filipe married in the Orangery at Kensington Palace, with a humanist ceremony and a handfasting. Afterwards the whole wedding party went up to the King’s State Apartments for portraits under the painted ceilings. That’s a rare thing to be offered on a wedding day, so if the palace gives you the chance, take it. Ten or fifteen minutes is plenty.
The Orangery is a separate building in the palace grounds, long and bright, with tall windows down one side. On their night it was lit up pink after dark, which gave us one last picture of the two of them in the doorway.
Read Danielle and Filipe’s Kensington Palace wedding.
Chelsea Old Town Hall
The register office for the borough is Chelsea Old Town Hall on the King’s Road. I’ve photographed more than twenty weddings there. The ceremony takes twenty to thirty minutes, so there’s a lot of the day left afterwards. Liliya and Charles went from the steps to the Royal Albert Hall and then over to Westminster. Alexander and Laura did it the other way round and started on Westminster Bridge.
Rooms, timings and hourly prices are on my Chelsea Old Town Hall wedding photographer page.
The London Oratory and Holland Park
Sophie and Michael married at the Brompton Oratory in 2021, in the church Michael had gone to since he was a child. Afterwards we took the family to Holland Park for the group photos, then the two of them into the Kyoto Garden, with its waterfall, koi pond and peacocks. The reception was speeches and drinks at a family mews house nearby.
Holland Park is one of the few places in central London where the portraits don’t look like the city at all.
Read Sophie and Michael’s London Oratory wedding.
Portraits around Kensington
The steps of the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial opposite are the two I use most. Kensington Gardens is a Royal Park, so portraits there in wedding clothes need a photography permit, which I can sort out for you.
Kensington works just as well for pre wedding photography London shoots. The Albert Memorial, the palace and Hyde Park are on most of my pre-wedding routes for couples flying in.
Prices
Kensington weddings are priced the same as the rest of my London work: £1,350 for five hours, £1,800 for eight and £2,200 for eleven, with register office ceremonies from £350. Every image is edited, and smaller weddings get their full gallery within 24 hours. Full details are on my London wedding photography prices page.
There’s more of my work as a London wedding photographer on the home page, and nearby on my Knightsbridge and Belgravia pages.
Tell me your date and your venue and I’ll let you know straight away whether I’m free. Get in touch here.
