Manor Farm wedding | Katie & Harris

Manor Farm wedding photography

Manor Farm is a working farm in the village of Upton Cheney, just between Bristol and Bath. It is also a wedding venue that works well because it is simple. You cannot get simpler than cutting a space in the long grass and arranging some fold-up chairs near the top of a small hill, with views towards Bristol, creating an outdoor wedding ceremony space. Katie and Harris may have done the legal bit at Bristol Registry office three months before but this was the wedding day. A celebration with family and friends. A rural wedding near Bristol.

When I arrived, Harris was still getting ready. Katie was getting ready off-site. The sun was out, the temperature climbing. A chance of rain maybe but it didn’t come, the dark clouds circling the farm briefly. As guests made their way across the lane and up the hill to the wedding ceremony spot, Katie arrived to do the final getting-ready bits, lipstick, etc, in the small cottage, the Lambs House, at the entrance to the field. A few quick photos of this, then up the hill to await Katie. This was the picture. Katie and her mother, plus her bridesmaids, walking up the hill – a very, very long entrance to a wedding ceremony. I thought I had photographed the longest ever bridal entrance back in 2022 in Dorset, when Becky made her way to the outdoor wedding at Smedmore House. Looking it up on Google Earth, it reckons that the route out of Smedmore House to the wedding ceremony spot was 298m (978ft). The same site says that Katie’s walk up the hill, from Lambs House was 407m (1338ft) – a long walk!

An outdoor ceremony conducted by a friend and an erratic microphone…then back down the hill and across the road to the farm courtyard for drinks and canapes. Across the wall is a Pétanque terrain. The wedding meal was in the 17th-century Tythe Barn. Some of the tables would be moved later for the band to set up and a dance floor to be created. An impromptu karaoke dance off grew as the bemused band set up their kit at one of the barn. Talking to one of the guests during the meal, I reckoned that this was a crowd that would flood the dance floor, I wasn’t wrong, it was heaving.

Here are a few images from this Manor Farm wedding…