The second of my Favourite Hotels for Wedding Photography is The Crown Hotel in Wetheral, Cumbria.
Wetheral is somewhere I always used to go when I was a young lad on walks along the river. This was in the Hot Summers we used to have before the Greenhouse effect changed our summers forever. The Crown Hotel has some lovely grounds with lots of sheltered areas. If you want to know why sheltered areas are important, take a look at my earlier look at Dale Lodge.
There are plenty of different backdrops you can use for varied posed shots without even leaving the grounds.
If you fancy a change, you can still venture out of the grounds and down to the river which is lovely.
Or to the old train station which is also close by.The staff are very helpful and the food is great also. No worries there then! In fact I cant think of anything negative to say about the Crown Hotel. For a Wedding couple who are thinking of having their wedding there, you cant really go wrong with the hotel or surroundings.
There are also a number of doorways to shelter
Now here's something that could make or break your wedding memories!
You must get a wedding photographer fairly experienced in low light wedding photography to do your wedding here.
I dont find any problems at all as I have done many weddings at the crown hotel in very bad weather. But I have spent years perfecting the art of low light wedding photography. If your after a very traditional wedding photographer who will be using flash a lot then also make sure he is experienced so he will balance the flash with the ambient lighting. If you want a wedding photojournalist like myself, they must be pretty good.
The reasons for this are fairly simple! I have found that the places the wedding party tend to relax and drink when indoors are where there is very little window light. Even when they are somewhere near a window they tend to position themselves with their backs to the windows which can make things very tricky for someone who doesn't know what they are doing.
For myself the lighting in the Crown gives a nice contrasty look which I love anyway and its very much my style.
My advice to any wedding photographer who is already booked to do a wedding here is this:-
Invest in at least a 1.8 50mm lense and a camera that can be used at iso 1600 without an unusable amount of grain.
And with any venue if your not confident you can capture weddings in low light yet, pass the work on to another photographer who has the experience and ask to shoot along side them so next time you can be confident.
Doing a wedding in low light without the proper experience is wedding photography suicide!
If you screw it up, they will tell everyone and it will take you years to gain trust again.
Seriously, you may not even make any money if you screw a wedding up! And you will lose so much future business its unreal!
I have seen it happen. Photographers who have been lucky to have good weather for a good few weddings, and then when the weather is bad, they crumble.
All this is not a reflection on the Hotel I must add! The Crown Hotel is amazing for wedding photography. Wedding couples must choose the right wedding photographer is all I am trying to get accross.
This is by far not the darkest venue indoors believe me. As I have said, I love the lighting in the crown hotel, as it creates a lovely warm atmosphere and goes well with my style of photography.
So to wind it up!
The Crown Hotel is a great venue for wedding photography. Lovely surroundings, lovely grounds and a nice warm atmosphere inside.
You can look at their website for The Crown Hotel in Wetheral by clicking the link below.
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