Ridge Farm Studio | Amy & Simeon

Ridge Farm Wedding

A Ridge Farm wedding is a local wedding for me. I live on the same road. Just that Ridge Farm is on the other side of Rusper village to my house, but only 4.5 miles away. (Local weddings – never be more local than the wedding I shot at my neighbour’s house in 2021!)

Famous Recording Studio

Ridge Farm is famous for being a recording studio from the mid-1970s until the early 2000s. Which is odd given the flight path from Gatwick Airport is very close? Maybe that changed? But there is a long list of names that have worked here over those twenty-five years or so. For example, Roxy Music, Queen, The Smiths to Oasis, Muse and Status Quo. The music doors closed in 2003 and a wedding venue rose from that.

Outdoor wedding ceremony

Despite being local to me, I’ve had few enquiries over the years for this venue. Not sure why? The last time I was here, it was a wedding reception only, after a ceremony in Ditchling. This time, everything was onsite. An outdoor wedding ceremony in the woodland space the venue created a few years ago. Getting ready in one of the cottages – Amy was already in her dress when I arrived – super keen. Some guests were camping in the field at the back of the lawn. On a warm, humid day, it was a very chilled wedding, making us of the large lawn for drinks and wedding games. Dinner was in the Swimming Pool pavilion. Funny that everyone is sat eating and later dancing on top of a swimming pool. Although no dancing for the jazz band’s first set as everyone, including the evening guests, was enjoying the summer evening outside too much.

Here are a few images from this Ridge Farm wedding…

Wedding photography award

This image of Amy peering out of the cottage at Ridge Farm, looking for the arrival of her flower girls, won a coveted Gold award in the Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA) contest. A Gold award is the equivalent of being in the top three for a category which is only awarded when all four judges mark an image as such. The judges in this contest are photojournalists rather than wedding photographers. But it’s an image that sums up reportage wedding photography for me. Not big and brash. Not ‘enhanced’ with Photoshop gimmicks. A quietly observed reportage image, letting the day unfold without intervening. Capture what happened, tell the story.