A Buxted Park wedding in early spring, at the Grade II listed Palladian mansion in three hundred acres of East Sussex parkland. Pip and Adam married in the Victorian orangery with the glass roof over them, walked out into blossom, and were still going long after dark.
I photographed the day documentary-style from start to finish. Nobody was arranged, nothing was repeated for the camera, and the only forty-five minutes of direction were the three short portrait slots. What follows is the day in the order it happened.
The morning: a Palladian house, and a lot of tall windows
Buxted Park is an eighteenth-century mansion with forty-odd bedrooms, which means both sides get ready properly, on site, in rooms with the kind of windows that make the first two hours of the day easy. Nobody is sharing a mirror and nobody is arriving flustered.
I arrive about three hours before the ceremony and take almost nothing for the first twenty minutes. That is deliberate — I am working out where the light is coming from, which window is worth waiting by, and where I can stand without becoming part of the morning. After that I stop being noticeable, and the room forgets I am there.
The ceremony at Buxted Park
The orangery is the reason most couples book here. It is glass overhead and white underneath, so on a grey spring day it still fills with light, and a ceremony in it needs no flash at all — silent shutter, from the sides and the back.
I photograph reactions at least as much as I photograph the couple. The vows last about four minutes and there are usually twenty photographs worth having in them, of which three or four are of the two people getting married. The rest are mothers, best friends, and a small child who has entirely given up on the whole thing.
Confetti, and the one bit I do organise
Confetti works best just outside the orangery doors, in two lines rather than a ring. In early spring the blossom does half the job for you if the timing falls right.
Ushers hold everybody until the couple are properly into the gap, the walk is slow, nobody looks at me, and it happens once, properly. Then it is done and everyone goes back to a drink. It is the only moment of the day I take charge of, because confetti is over in eight seconds and it is very easy to waste.
Portraits, and the forty-five minutes I ask for
The directed part of a Buxted Park wedding comes to about forty-five minutes, and it is always split into three fifteen-minute slots rather than one long block — straight after the ceremony, again before dinner is called, and once more late on when the light drops. Nobody wants to be taken away from their own party for an hour, and you do not photograph any better in the fiftieth minute than you do in the fifth.
The portico and the parkland are the two things to use, and they are completely different pictures. Ten minutes on the steps and ten more out under the trees late on is worth far more than half an hour in the middle of the afternoon.
Speeches, and the people listening
Speeches are the richest twenty minutes of a Buxted Park wedding for a simple reason: nobody can leave and everybody is reacting. So I work the room rather than the top table. Half the frames I want are of the person listening, and specifically of the two or three who are trying not to cry and losing.
The evening, and why I do not leave at the first dance
A lot of photographers stop at the first dance. It is a tidy place to finish and it saves two hours, and it also removes the best hour of your own party from the story. The first dance is a formality; twenty minutes later the floor fills and the shoes come off, and that is the actual celebration.
The band set up inside and the room stayed full; the last frames on this page are well after midnight. I stayed until it was properly going, which is how I shoot every Buxted Park wedding. There is no overrun charge for that, because I do not sell hours and nobody is counting them.
Planning your own Buxted Park wedding?
If you are looking at Buxted Park, the venue’s own site is handpickedhotels.co.uk — they handle their own bookings and I am not on a commission arrangement with them, so nothing here is a recommendation I have been paid to make.
Everything I know about shooting a Buxted Park wedding is written up in more detail on my wedding venues page, including a suggested timeline and what I think the site does well. There is more of my work in the portfolio, an explanation of how I actually work on the day, and the price is one figure with everything in it.
Pip and Adam got a gallery of over eight hundred images, with more than a hundred previews in their inbox the morning after the wedding. If your date is free I would like to hear about it — send me your date and we will have a call.
Buxted Park wedding photographer FAQs
Where is Buxted Park?
Station Road, Buxted, East Sussex TN22 4AY — a Grade II listed Palladian mansion of the eighteenth century, set in more than three hundred acres of parkland.
Is the orangery good for photographs?
Very. It is glass overhead and pale underneath, so it holds light on a dull day and never needs a flash. It is the main reason a spring or winter wedding at Buxted Park is less of a gamble than it sounds.
How much does a Buxted Park wedding photographer cost?
£2,500, all in. Unlimited hours, over eight hundred edited images, previews the next morning, travel included and drone where the rules allow it. There are no packages and no hourly rate to run over.
How long do you need for group photographs?
It depends how many you want. I advise eight to ten groups, which takes fifteen to twenty minutes with a list agreed in advance — then everybody goes back to their drink.
Do you travel to East Sussex?
Yes, and travel is included in the price. There is no mileage charge and no overnight fee if I come the night before, which I often do.
