For Helia and Bobby, I photographed the reception and their wedding portraits at Buxted Park Hotel, bringing together two lovely parts of a wedding story: time spent celebrating and time spent together.
A country-house wedding setting at Buxted Park
The setting gave us a beautiful backdrop. Buxted Park’s Palladian mansion is surrounded by gardens and parkland, offering a combination of country-house architecture and open, green surroundings.
Buxted Park is an eighteenth-century Palladian mansion in Sussex, with gardens and parkland around the house. The combination gives a wedding photographer two quite different ways to describe the same place: the character of the architecture and the softer, more open feeling of the grounds. For Helia and Bobby’s reception and portraits, that was a lovely setting to work within.
My part in their wedding story was these chapters of celebration and time together. I wanted the gallery to make the most of them, giving the house its place while keeping Helia and Bobby at the heart of the photographs. A beautiful venue becomes meaningful in a wedding collection because of the people who were there.
Helia and Bobby beneath the chandelier at Buxted ParkA bridal portrait in the Buxted Park gardens
Couple portraits at Buxted Park Hotel
For couple’s portraits, I love finding a balance between showing the location and keeping the photographs centred on the people in it. A wider composition can capture the character of a place like Buxted Park, while a closer portrait brings everything back to the newlyweds.
With country-house portraits, I like the photographs to move between a sense of place and a sense of closeness. A wider picture gives the couple a memory of their surroundings; a closer one lets their faces and the way they are together become the focus. The variety comes from looking thoughtfully, rather than needing every photograph to have a completely different location.
That balance is what I wanted for Helia and Bobby at Buxted Park. Their portraits belonged to their wedding, so I wanted them to feel connected to the celebration as well as the setting. It is a pleasure to make photographs that can stand alone beautifully and also become part of a couple’s larger collection of memories.
An intimate portrait together inside the hotelA silhouette in the window light
Photographing the wedding reception
Photographing the reception alongside those portraits allowed both sides of Helia and Bobby’s celebration to belong in the same gallery. Their photographs were not only about being a couple in a beautiful setting; they were also about the occasion they were there to celebrate.
The reception gave the gallery the other side of that story. Portraits make space for the newlyweds, while reception photographs bring the occasion around them back into view. Keeping both together helps a wedding collection feel complete within the part of the day being photographed: time for the couple, and time for the celebration they are sharing.
What I enjoyed about Helia and Bobby’s wedding was having both of those things to photograph in one Sussex setting. The house and parkland gave the pictures their surroundings, but the story belonged to the couple and their reception. For anyone considering wedding photography at Buxted Park, that is the combination I would want to explore together: photographs that remember the place beautifully and feel personal when you return to them.
It was a lovely wedding story to capture at Buxted Park: elegant surroundings, portraits together and a reception to remember.
A moment together at Buxted ParkA playful portrait beneath the veil
Planning your own wedding photographs.
If this feels like the kind of day you would love, tell me about your plans. We can talk about the photographs that matter to you and how they will fit around your celebration.
