Why London is the best city in the world for a luxury wedding
I’ve photographed weddings in London for over twenty years, and in a fair few other cities as well. London wins, but not for the reasons the brochures give.
It isn’t the history. Plenty of cities have history. It’s that London packs an unreasonable number of good venues into a small area, and that everything you need to run a wedding well is already here.
Everything is close together
This is the real advantage and almost nobody mentions it.
You can get married at Old Marylebone Town Hall and have champagne at The Landmark ten minutes later on foot. You can leave Chelsea Old Town Hall and be photographed outside the Royal Albert Hall inside fifteen minutes. Ceremony in the City, portraits at St Paul’s, dinner in Mayfair — that’s a normal London day, not an ambitious one.
Compare that to a country wedding where the church and the reception are half an hour apart. You lose an hour of your own wedding to cars. Here you don’t.
It also means you can change your mind. If it starts raining, there’s somewhere covered two streets away. That flexibility is worth more on the day than any single beautiful room.
The venues, honestly
People ask me which London venue is best. There isn’t one — they’re good at different things.
The grand hotels
Claridge’s, The Ritz, The Landmark, The Savoy, the Mandarin Oriental. What you’re buying is that nothing goes wrong. The staff have done this a thousand times, there’s always somewhere to put people, and the weather stops mattering.
The trade-off is that hotel interiors are dark and warmly lit. Beautiful to be in, harder to photograph without adding light. Worth knowing before you fall in love with a ballroom.
The livery halls and historic buildings
One Moorgate Place, Stationers’ Hall, the halls scattered around the City. These give you rooms nobody has seen a hundred versions of, which matters more than people realise when they’re looking through their photos in ten years.
They’re City venues, so the streets around them empty out at weekends. Portraits outside a City hall on a Saturday are far easier than anywhere in the West End.
The register offices
Old Marylebone Town Hall and Chelsea Old Town Hall are two of the best-looking civil venues in the country, and they cost a fraction of everywhere else. The ceremony is short — under half an hour — and you’re back out on the steps.
A lot of couples now do the legal bit at a town hall and spend their money on the party instead. It’s a sensible way round.
The green ones
Kew Gardens, Syon Park, Hampton Court, the Hyde Park hotels. If you want your photos to not look like a city, you don’t have to leave London to get that.
The things nobody warns you about
Since this is meant to be useful rather than a brochure:
- Traffic will eat your timings. Two miles across central London on a Saturday afternoon can be forty minutes. Budget for it or you’ll be photographing your drinks reception from a taxi.
- Some landmarks need permission. A lot of the obvious backdrops are on private or managed land, and a tripod or a big group can get you moved on. Ask your photographer where they can actually work rather than assuming.
- Town hall slots run back to back. You get the steps for a few minutes and then the next couple wants them. Confetti and family photos need to happen quickly and in a planned order.
- It rains. It’ll rain on some part of your day. Every good London venue has an answer to this — ask what theirs is before you book.
- Sunset moves a lot. Nearly ten in June, half four in December. That changes your entire timeline, and it’s the single biggest thing couples get wrong.
Suppliers are the quiet advantage
Because London has this much wedding work, the people who do it are good at it and there are a lot of them.
That means you can find a florist whose style you actually like rather than the one florist within twenty miles. It means a saxophonist, a string quartet or a DJ who does forty weddings a year, not four. It means dresses altered properly and on time.
It also means you’ll pay London prices. That’s the deal.
Guests can actually get here
Five airports and the Eurostar. If half your family is flying in from abroad, London is about the easiest place in Europe to ask them to come to, and they’ll find something to do with the rest of the weekend without your help.
For anyone travelling a long way, that matters more than the venue does.
Photographing weddings here
The reason I’ve never wanted to work anywhere else is that no two London weddings look the same. A Persian ceremony in a Georgian townhouse in Marylebone, a City livery hall in November, a town hall on the King’s Road with a horse-drawn carriage outside — that’s three weekends, not three years.
What it demands is knowing the city rather than just the venue. Where the light lands on a particular street at four o’clock. Which side of a building is in shade. How long it really takes to get from Kensington to Westminster with a bride in the car. That’s not something you can look up.
My approach is unposed. I stay out of the way and photograph what happens, and for portraits I give people somewhere to walk rather than arranging them into shapes.
Planning a London wedding?
Have a look at my prices or the luxury wedding photography page, and send me your date and venue. I’ll tell you straight away whether I’m free, and I’ll usually have something useful to say about the venue while I’m at it.
