Gravetye Manor wedding – Jennifer & Matthew

Gravetye Manor wedding photography

Gravetye Manor – according to Matthew’s speech, this had been Jennifer’s first choice for her wedding day. But when Jennifer got in touch about my work, back in April last year, the reception was planned to be at Newick Park, with the wedding in September. Roll on to last October and an email from Jennifer, to see if I was free at the end of August, as Newick Park was closing down – I think it has become a very grand private home again. So the date was switched and the wedding venue was too.

( One downside was that every wedding I have shot at Newick Park in the last few years has been a scorcher. Wasn’t to be at Gravetye Manor – just as this August hasn’t been )

A sixteenth-century manor house, built for a bride and buried deep within its own grounds in the West Sussex countryside, it is most famous for its gardens. Rather, that is, than as a smugglers’ hideout and supplier of cannons in the eighteenth century. It was here that the coverage begins. Jennifer got ready at the hotel with her mother and two bridesmaids, one being her sister, Rebecca. The wedding ceremony was over the border, in East Sussex, in the pretty village of Maresfield, near Uckfield. Across from the church, St Bartholomew’s, Matt was with family and friends in the village pub. A last-minute spill out for some before Jennifer arrived at the church, with her father, in a rather unique wedding car.

Deed done, rings exchanged and the ‘confetti run’……..run, it was back to Gravetye Manor. Drinks and canapés in the flower garden, as the sun struggled and frankly, failed, to break through the cloud cover. It was then time for the wedding breakfast in the dining room, followed by speeches. Not sure if Matthew’s double entendre was on purpose, but it had some tables in stitches. Cake cutting next and then the dancing. No first dance though, just everyone on the dance floor. The second week in a row, is this a new trend?

Anyhow, a lovely wedding day. Congratulations to Jennifer and Matthew ( “Blue Steel Matthew!!)

Here are a few images from this day at Gravetye Manor…