STUDLEY CASTLE WEDDING

LORI & TOM

Lori and Tom’s wedding featured on English Wedding Blog!

Towards the end of July we returned a venue we’ve not seen for some time. Studley Castle is a 19th century ‘country house’ which has been used for several purposes since being built, but has been a hotel and wedding venue for quite a few years now. The last time we photographed a wedding here was in 2011 and although some parts of the venue and grounds have changed a little in that time, photographically there is still much to take advantage of within the building itself and in the surrounding grounds.

Lori and Tom found us online last summer. Their wedding ceremony was held at St Mark’s church in their home town of Leamington Spa. The church is really quite restrictive in what they allow to be photographed, but for Lori and Tom it was still a lovely service and we did at least manage to get some pictures from the back of the cavernous church interior.

As the drinks reception started at Studley Castle, the wedding party relaxed into the warm afternoon with lawn games (provided by Pollyanna Vintage) and enjoying the tricks of a magican. This was a very bright and warm summer’s day and rather than take Lori and Tom away from their guests we opted to do the majority of their ‘couple’ photos following the speeches in the gorgeous evening light.

The Studley Castle grounds are quite large and varied with many areas allowed to grow naturally rather than being perfectly manicured. From our perspective this makes for a much more interesting environment in which to make pictures – the long grasses and multitude of wild flowers looked really beautiful in places.  Our style has changed somewhat over the last few years and during this wedding we used some areas of the grounds we’d never considered in the past and we really happy with the results we got. Lori and Tom were just smashing to work with. Their planning was very thorough and their ushers and bridesmaids really helped the day move along nicely.

Before the evening disco started, the guests were treated to pianist Scott Grant, who was happy to take requests and got the wedding party singing along nicely! We always love to see live music at weddings and Scott did an excellent job.

A really big thank-you to Lori and Tom for not only choosing us to photograph their big day but for being just such nice people and so lovely to work with.

Hair: Laura Michelle Hairdressing
Makeup: Makeup By Jodie
Flowers: Flair With Flowers
Hairpieces: Hermione Harbutt
Cake: The Hand Crafted Cake Co
Car Hire: DeLorean Hire

Country House & Castle wedding photography by Rob & Sarah Gillespie.  Husband and wife wedding photographers based in the Midlands, near Birmingham.