Wedding Photographer in Hampshire

Farnham House Hotel, Wedding Venue Review

Farnham House Hotel

Alton Road

Farnham

Surrey

GU10 5ER

Farnham House Hotel is a smaller intimate wedding venue which comfortably ticks all of the boxes I am looking for when considering the photography at your wedding.

At the front of the hotel a gravelled area lends itself well to Autumn, Winter and wet weddings where it may be impractical to to walk upon wet or muddy grass and provides a good solid and attractive area to shoot in. An aerial view of this area from an upstairs window is also available making for a good viewpoint for larger group shots.

Steps lead down to a pleasant lawn where several mature tree's provide shade and a good backdrop for photographs, less than a 100 yards from the hotel entrance and the area where guests tend to congregate making it easy to call guests for groups.

Continuing down the lawn there are several more mature tees which have photographic potential leading to a large landscaped pond, complete with bench. This is a very attractive area and ideal for photography.

Inside the venue the room where the service is held poses no technical difficulties and the banqueting room is light and airy.

The stairway can be also be used with additional lighting, it's dark wood panelling adds a sense of character and grandeur, but also absorbs a lot of light making the area quite dark. This issue is relatively easy to resolve by using additional lighting.

What really strikes me about Farnham House Hotel is the organisation and relaxed feel of weddings there. The staff always seem to know exactly what they are doing and everything tends to run on time. The venue is attractive without being overly pretentious and that often makes for a very relaxed wedding.

With a separate room for the service and meal, in the event of wet weather the room used for the service can be employed for group photographs, while various areas around the stairway, bar and reception have potential for portraits of the couple. The quality of light in the bar and reception area's are particularly good, coming from large windows and then absorbed by oak panelling, giving a lovely directional quality of light with good contrast.

Informal pictures are easily taken anywhere inside the venue, with few technical problems to overcome other than ensuring flash is not reflected from the glass in the conservatory and the wood panelling does not impart an undue colour cast on reflected light.

In it's size, Farnham House Hotel is one of the more rounded wedding venues in the area and worth shortlisting.