A Hickstead Hotel wedding in Bolney, West Sussex. Vicky & Aaron chose this quaint wedding venue just above the South Downs National Park in the West Sussex countryside. The civil ceremony was held at the hotel, in this bright, white room with the carpet laid out ready for the bride and her father to walk down the aisle.
A Hickstead Hotel Civil Ceremony
The wedding flowers had colours of pale blush pink and ivory, with hints of green foliage, and the bouquet was tied in the shower style. A confetti photo was organised just outside the hotel entrance as they led their guests into the gardens for the wedding reception.
Victoria & Aaron, The Hickstead Hotel Wedding, Bolney, West Sussex 
Feeling comfortable in front of the camera…
Aaron & Vicky had booked a engagement photo shoot with me beforehand, which gave them some great practice for getting comfortable in front of the camera. You can view my blog post on my techniques on engagement shoots here, and they were so natural in front of the camera, I just told them where to stand and they looked fantastic in the gardens of this West Sussex hotel.
Victoria & Aaron, The Hickstead Hotel Wedding, Bolney, West Sussex 
The hotel garden has a small collection of small trees to create some really interesting backgrounds and foreground bokeh effects, and I loved using my 85mm lens at f1.6 to create some stunning shallow depth of field in these portraits.
Golden Hour Lighting
For our golden hour photographs, or lack of golden hour lighting, we went back to the fallow field near the gate at the edge of the hotel grounds. With permission from the landowner, we hopped over the fence into the field. The soft lighten from the cloud cover was very beautiful but I also set up a bit of flash lighting to ‘cheat’ and create my own golden hour light. A little bit of balance of the colours in Lightroom and local adjustments really brought out the strong colours in the clouds.
View the full wedding on the website here.
