Styal Lodge Wedding Photographer – Wren and Jack’s wedding

I’m very lucky to get to get to photograph a few weddings every year at Styal Lodge. It’s a fantastic bespoke wedding venue located in Cheshire. It’s just over the road from Quarry Bank Mill a National Trust property that is also a great wedding venue.  Styal Lodge is family run venue, which means that the day always runs smoothly.

The lodge was purpose built and designed as a wedding venue. It’s not your average golf club that has decided to ‘host’ weddings. We normally get to have a ride on a buggy down to the lake too ! There is a fantastic little jetty by the lake. This allows for some fantastic portraits away from all the guests, and gives the couple a bit of time to savour the wedding day…even though I’m there with a camera nightstand and flash !

Wren and Jack were blessed with great weather on their wedding day, the sun shone and it wasn’t too cold !

Styal Lodge use a couple of different fantastic caterers, both do fantastic food. There is a great courtyard and gardens to the side of the Lodge. This allows the guests to have relaxed drink and chat in some spectacular grounds in privacy away from the golfers.

At the side of the lodge there is The Bridal Room, this is a separate room that is ideal for the bride and her bridesmaids to get ready and have hair and makeup applied. It’s very big, light and airy and is so much nicer than being in a small hotel room to start your big day. The only thing to remember is to close the curtains nearer the ceremony time, just to ensure that any gusts that have gone for a sneaky wander to inadvertently get a peek of you in your dress before your grand entrance !

We had a fantastic day, with board games, lot’s of tea:in very nice antique tea cups, lot’s of laughter and dancing and finished with fireworks later on on the golf course !

We finished the day with a massive fireworks display, I’ve not had many fireworks at Stayl Lodge before, I think you need to get special permission with it being so close to Manchester Airport…but it it was definitely worth it.

• for my photography friends, the firework shot’s are captured as follows. Camera on a tripod with a remote trigger release. There was a flash on a lightstand on camera left. The camera was in manual exposure/bulb mode. ISO 100. f/11. There was no ambient light on Wren and Jack they were stood in complete darkness, on purpose! The flash was being triggered by a couple of Pocket Wizards, a plus 3 and a multimax. The multipack allows it to fire the flash using rear curtain sync. When the fireworks started I would press and hold the shutter open via the remote trigger and after 10-40 seconds let go allowing the flash to fire and close the shutter. This allows the couple to be exposed correctly on each shot via the flash and allows me to capture multiple fireworks going off in a single exposure.

Yet another superb wedding over at Styal Lodge ! Thanks too all the suppliers involved on the day, that all make my life easier !

If you are getting married at Styal Lodge or having your wedding reception there, then please feel free to get in touch with me. I can then check to see if your date is available, pop over some more information and arrange a meeting if you wanted.

Wren and Jack didn’t have a videographer on the day, and had tasked Mum with recording the ceremony on her iPhone…fortunately I had a spare camera in my bag that records so I popped a camera onto a tripod and recorded the wedding ceremony for them. You can see the wedding ceremony here.