By Alex Beckett Photography
AS FEATURED IN:
wedding photography
st john's COllege Cambridge
Wedding photography at St John's College, Cambridge, is a delight. I’ve photographed many weddings here and the prospect is always energising and enlivening. It dates back to the early 1500s but some of the prettiest locations for shooting a newly-wed couple are Victorian, and really romantic. If you’d like to know more about packages and starting prices, click here and my studio manager or I will get back to you asap! There are no extra travel charges or overnight stay costs for wedding photography at St John's College.
Imagine getting married at a location as perfect as St John's College! The architecture is so impressive and there's a real sense of a modern couple taking vows where generations have before. Summer weddings here are brilliant because St John's is one of the colleges on the Backs so its grounds - and indeed, its two bridges - straddle the river. Naturally, many couples holding their wedding here want to take advantage of the location to grab some shots punting; there's no more romantic and fun Cantabrigian image. I've hurtled up and down the backs with my equipment many, many times to the vantage points I know to snatch that shot! Incidentally, the Bridge of Sighs is actually a little unexciting for an interior shot; I prefer to take my couple into the gardens, with the pretty exterior of the bridge as a background.
What a spectacular place to exchange wedding vows! Any bride and her father walking up the aisle here, with the sun filtering through the incredibly detailed and colourful stained glass, is in for a special experience. It's usual for couples to go from their ceremony here in the chapel to a drinks reception in the St John's gardens and wedding breakfast in The Hall, which, with its 16th Century hammerbeam roof and linen-fold panelling, is a total change of atmosphere - and light. In the shot above, for example, I wanted to record a sense of the impressiveness of the chapel, with the guests in their pews, but to ensure the bride and groom were the ones softly emphasised by the light.
New Court is a great location for a special wow! shot. I like to sneak my couple out during the wedding breakfast for a few shots; we always try to do this quickly and discreetly, and all our couples really seem to appreciate some quiet moments together, before returning to the party. The gardens by New Court are a perfect place for a Cambridge wedding reception and this is where a wedding photographer can really enjoy documenting the friends and relatives of all generations in order to create that photographic narrative of the happy day, which virtually every newly-married couple wants to look back on.
GETTING MARRIED AT st john's COLLEGE?
Alex is uniquely experienced having photographed many times at Saint John's. We'd love to chat to you to answer all your questions and especially to find out what sort of photographs you want for your big day.
Postscript from a St John's College Wedding Photographer
Guests on horseback?
As your wedding guests sit down to a wedding breakfast, the history of the extraordinary formal hall will be palpable. Elizabeth 1st once rode into this hall on horseback - and was greeted by a very long speech in Latin.
Love poetry
Alumni include the romantic poet William Wordsworth, who wrote these famous lines about his love for a woman he named Lucy: 'Fair as a star, when only one/ Is shining in the sky'.
Chapel music
The stained glass in the chapel show gospel scenes in which you can distinguish St. John because he is always dressed in deep red and green. In the great window in the antechapel, one of the heavenly choir is, apparently, playing a banjo.