Llechwen Hall Weddings: What I Learned Photographing Kate and Jack
I photographed Kate and Jack at Llechwen Hall in June, and I've been thinking about the place ever since.
If you're getting married there, or you're still deciding, here's what I noticed. Not a review. Just the practical things I wish someone had told me before I turned up.
It's the views. That's the thing nobody tells you.
Llechwen sits up above a valley, and the hills are simply there, in almost every frame. Through the marquee windows. Over the dry stone walls. Behind the trees on the lawn.
You don't have to go hunting for a backdrop. It has already been handed to you, in every direction, and it changes all day as the light moves across it.
If you're comparing venues and you want your photographs to look like Wales rather than like a nice room, this is the argument for Llechwen.
The dry stone walls
This is where I'd take you.
Low walls, open hillside behind, and it's about ninety seconds' walk from the marquee. That last bit matters more than it sounds, because it means I can get you out there, take what I need, and have you back with a drink in your hand before anyone's noticed you've gone.
Jack and the groomsmen went out there and it's some of my favourite work from the whole day. It's the sort of frame that only exists because the landscape is doing the heavy lifting.
The barn, and then the lawn
The barn is genuinely beautiful. Oak frames, timber trusses, that warm light coming down through the roof.
And then you step outside and you're on a lawn with a white post-and-rail fence and the entire valley in front of you. Two completely different photographs, ten feet apart.
The practical bits
Llechwen is a 17th-century building set in six acres, about twenty minutes from Cardiff, with a garden marquee that seats up to around 300. What that means for you is space, and options, and a room that's bright rather than dark, which is not something you can say about every hotel in South Wales.
Kate and Jack
They had a male voice choir, which is something you feel in your chest rather than hear. And a singing waiter, who I'd been sceptical about and who then got every single person in the room on their feet, including the ones who'd said they weren't dancing.
It was a proper day. The kind where you drive home at midnight with your ears ringing and a memory card full of people being happy.
How I'd shoot your day there
The same way. Documentary, unposed, and out of your way.
I'll be honest about why. I hate having my photograph taken. Properly hate it. The idea of being stood somewhere and told to tilt my chin makes me want to climb out of a window. So I don't do that to people.
I know you want the photographs. Everyone does. What nobody actually wants is to spend their wedding day having their photograph taken. Those are two different things, and my job is to give you the first without the second.
So I get the group shots done early and quickly, because that's the part nobody enjoys and everybody wants over with. And then I leave you alone, and I photograph what happens.
Getting married at Llechwen Hall? Check your date.