Wasing Park Wedding

Ali & Ed

a wasing park wedding

Set amidst the rolling Berkshire countryside, Wasing Park is the quintessential fairytale wedding venue. With its historic architecture, lush gardens, and serene lakeside setting, it provided the perfect backdrop for Ali and Ed's Wasing Park Wedding. Surrounded by ancient woodland and parkland, the estate provides a serene backdrop. The site features a 15th-century parish church and Victorian Summerhouse, offering a range of diverse spaces to choose from for ceremonies and receptions.

Ali & Ed

For the morning preparations, both Ali and Ed got ready on site at Wasing Park. However, the venue estate is so large, that it was actually several miles journey between the two locations! Ali and her bridal party spent the morning at Kitt’s cottage, a cute little house some distance from the main venue. I was able to get some great shots of her laughing and joking with her bridesmaids and mum. The space was quite dark, but this allowed me to use the lovely natural light from the windows to frame some silhouettes and get some nice moody footage.

Ed got ready at the main Wasing Park buildings, with his groomsman made up of his two sons and dad. I always love being able to capture both sets of preparations - the ability to include both sections in the final film makes the narrative balance much better, and less one-sided. Ed’s speech from later in the day was awesome (including a surprise serenading of his new bride!) - and it gave me the perfect audio to include as narration over the prep footage. His lovely words about Ali complimented the footage perfectly.

The ceremony

The ceremony for this Wasing Park Wedding took place at the Summerhouse; a beautiful Victorian building with a hand painted mural embellished on the wall. This was a lovely spot for a ceremony - even with the weather slightly overcast, the room was really bright and spacious. Accompanied by a string quartet, Ali looked resplendent as she made her way down the aisle, arm-in-arm with her dad. The couple portrait session from later in the day gave me plenty of footage of the happy couple to combine with the audio of their vows - a simple yet effective technique for heightening the emotional impact of this section of the film.

Despite some unseasonal rain showers, we were still able to get some great confetti shots, providing a few clips to use as a transition from the ceremony to the reception. One of the highlights of this Wasing Park wedding was the bouncy castle, something that both the adults and children made the most of! Despite being a historic venue, Wasing Park has been restored with lots of large glass windows and doors, which not only looks lovely but also provides me as a videographer the opportunity to utilise them to create some interesting reflection shots. Again, a simple technique but one that adds an extra level of depth and interest to footage that could otherwise be a bit plain. For the narration of this section, I once again used some of Ed’s speech. His playful yet sincere words thanking all of the guests for coming to celebrate with him and Ali made for the perfect narration.

Party!

For the first dance, the photographer decided to use a large spotlight in order to brighten up the dancefloor a little. Rather than use this to capture brighter footage, I instead used it to backlight Ali and Ed, allowing me to get some lovely looking footage of them dancing together in silhouette. I was really pleased with how these clips turned out, and utilised the same idea when filming the live musician; Michael G Moore The Piano Animal (an awesome addition to any wedding!). As their videographer, I was privileged to capture the beauty of Ali and Ed’s special day, and it was a joy to see the love shared between them, their family and their friends.