Getting married like a royal in London
Couples say this to me fairly often, and they don’t all mean the same thing. Some mean the venue. Some mean the photographs — that formal, composed look. Some just mean they want the day to feel like an occasion rather than a party.
All three are achievable. Only one of them needs a palace.
Which royal venues you can actually book
Start here, because the list is shorter than people expect.
Westminster Abbey — realistically, no. It’s a Royal Peculiar and eligibility to marry there is tightly restricted. Beautiful to photograph outside; not somewhere you can book because you’d like to.
Hampton Court Palace — yes. Henry VIII’s palace, run by Historic Royal Palaces, and it does host weddings. Tudor courtyards, state apartments and sixty acres of gardens. This is the closest you’ll get to marrying in a genuine royal residence.
Kensington Palace — the Orangery in the palace gardens is available for private events. It’s a beautiful white eighteenth-century room with tall windows, and it sits in Kensington Gardens.
Claridge’s — not royal property, but a long-standing London base for visiting royalty and heads of state. Art Deco interiors, the chequered foyer floor, the staircase. I’ve written more about why Claridge’s works so well and the one caveat that comes with it.
The Royal Courts of Justice, the Café Royal, the Royal Albert Hall’s spaces — Victorian and Edwardian grandeur, all bookable, and none of them requiring you to be related to anybody.
What actually reads as “royal” in a photograph
This is the useful part, and it isn’t what most people guess.
Scale. A high ceiling with space above people’s heads is the single biggest thing. It’s why a state room photographs differently to a nice hotel function room, even when both are beautiful. If your venue has height, use it — shoot wide and let the room be big.
Symmetry. Royal architecture is symmetrical, and photographs that use that symmetry read as formal immediately. Standing dead centre in an archway does more work than any pose.
Steps and doorways. Almost every famous royal wedding image is people on steps or coming through a door. It gives you height difference, a natural frame, and a sense of arrival.
Distance. Formal portraits sit further back than candid ones. Filling the frame with two faces is intimate; standing them small in a big room is regal. Both are good. They’re different pictures.
Posing, without it looking stiff
I don’t pose people much. But if you want the formal look, a few things help.
- Stand tall and stand still. Most of what reads as regal is just posture and not fidgeting.
- Hands matter. They’re the giveaway. One hand in a pocket, or holding an arm, beats hands hanging loose.
- Look at each other, not always at me. A composed look between two people is warmer than two people staring down a lens, and it still reads formal.
- Walk. Movement through a big space — a corridor, a garden path, a colonnade — gives you the grand entrance without anyone having to perform.
The trick with all of this is to do a handful of formal frames and then stop. A whole album of composed portraits is a catalogue. Mix them with the real day and the formal ones land much harder.
The details worth photographing
Formal weddings tend to have more considered detail, and it’s worth twenty minutes of the day.
Flowers, the tablescape, the stationery, the rings, the shoes, whatever heirloom is being worn. I shoot detail early, before the room fills and before anything gets moved — a table looks its best for about ten minutes and then it’s a dinner.
Family pieces are the ones to flag to me. A grandmother’s brooch or a borrowed veil is worth more in an album than any floral arrangement, and I won’t know it’s significant unless you tell me.
London wedding planners for a formal wedding
A wedding at this level runs on coordination, and a good planner is worth more than most things you could spend the same money on. Three London names worth approaching:
Sarah Haywood — one of the best-known luxury wedding planners in the country, with a long track record of large, complex, discreet events.
Quintessentially Weddings — a global network with access to venues and suppliers that are hard to reach independently, including historic properties not on the open market.
By Bruce Russell — a background in luxury hospitality, which shows in how the service side of the day is run rather than only how it looks.
From my side of it, the difference a good planner makes is simple: when the timings hold and nothing is announced late, I spend the whole day photographing people instead of chasing the schedule. That shows in the pictures.
Season by season
Briefly, because it changes more than people expect.
Spring — the gardens at Hampton Court and Kensington are the reason to marry then. Layers, though: it’s colder than the photos suggest and the weather turns.
Summer — long light. Sunset is near half nine in June, so your best portrait window falls after dinner. Plan to step out for ten minutes between courses.
Autumn — the best compromise. Warm colour outdoors, light that’s low all afternoon rather than only at the end, and easier dates to book.
Winter — everything happens indoors and after dark, which suits grand interiors well. Candles and chandeliers do more for a formal wedding than daylight does. Sunset is half four, so portraits need to be early.
Doing it without a palace
If the budget doesn’t stretch to a state room, the look is still available.
Marry at Old Marylebone Town Hall or Chelsea Old Town Hall — both Victorian civil venues with proper steps and grand interiors, at a fraction of the cost. Then take twenty minutes afterwards at the Royal Albert Hall, outside Buckingham Palace, or on Westminster Bridge.
Nobody looking at those photographs later will be counting what the venue cost. They’ll see the building, the steps and the two of you.
Planning one?
Send me your date and venue and I’ll tell you whether I’m free. Prices are here, and there’s more on how I work on the luxury wedding photography page.
