Taunton Wedding Photographer
Documentary wedding photography, based on Exmoor
Taunton is forty-five minutes from my front door on Exmoor, down the A358 past Wiveliscombe, and it’s where a good share of my Somerset weddings happen. The county town has the register office in the middle of it, the Quantock Hills ten minutes to the north, and a ring of venues around it that I’ve got to know properly over the years: country-house gardens, organic farms, a Georgian court under the hills, and the big house on the coast at St Audries.
I photograph weddings in a documentary way. I don’t run the day, I follow it, and I’d rather catch your dad’s face during the speeches than spend an hour arranging people on a lawn. The group photos still happen, quickly and painlessly, and then I disappear into the crowd again. What you get back is a full, honest record of the day, edited to last rather than to match this year’s filter.
Weddings I’ve photographed around Taunton
Hestercombe House and Gardens at Cheddon Fitzpaine is the one most couples ask me about: Chris and Heather married in the Orangery on a spring afternoon with the wisteria out, and we walked down to the Great Cascade in the woodland garden for their portraits. Huntstile Organic Farm at Goathurst, on the Bridgwater side of the Quantocks, gave Sam and Lucy a small, relaxed wedding with a cider barn and a sixteenth-century farmhouse. I’ve photographed a winter wedding at the Somerset Registration Service in the Municipal Buildings on Corporation Street, a summer wedding in Taunton itself, a wedding at Crowcombe Court on the far side of the hills, and two weddings at St Audries Park, twenty-five minutes up the A358 at West Quantoxhead.
How a Taunton wedding day tends to run
Most couples get ready in town or at the venue, marry somewhere between midday and two, and have the light on their side until early evening. The Quantocks make a lovely backdrop for an escape of twenty minutes before the meal, and Hestercombe’s gardens and Huntstile’s lane are both at their best in the last hour of sun. If you’re marrying at the register office and heading out to a farm or a pub afterwards, I’ll plan the move so the travelling time doesn’t eat the best light; I know the roads and where the traffic sits on a Saturday.
A Taunton wedding in pictures
Chris and Heather at Hestercombe, with a few frames from Huntstile and St Audries.
Venues around Taunton
- Hestercombe House and Gardens, Cheddon Fitzpaine: the Orangery, the formal gardens and the woodland walk to the cascade.
- Huntstile Organic Farm, Goathurst: intimate weddings, a cider barn, the Quantocks behind.
- Crowcombe Court: a Georgian house in the lee of the Quantocks, fifteen minutes out of town.
- St Audries Park, West Quantoxhead: the house, the chapel and the gardens on the coast.
- Somerset Registration Service, Corporation Street: a proper civil ceremony in the middle of town, and some very good brick and stone to photograph against afterwards.
- Coombe Lodge, Blagdon: forty minutes north, under the Mendips.
- Village churches at Bishops Lydeard, Kingston St Mary, Staplegrove and Trull, and plenty of marquee weddings in the farmland between them.
Good to know
Travel. Taunton is well inside my home patch, so there’s nothing to add for travel. Light. The sun drops behind the Quantocks and the Blackdowns, so in summer the golden hour runs late; in winter I’ll get the portraits done straight after the ceremony. Vivary Park and the river are five minutes from the register office if you want a few frames in town before the party. Rain. It’s Somerset; I bring umbrellas and a plan, and some of my favourite Hestercombe pictures were taken in a shower.
Taking a limited number of weddings for 2027 and 2028
If my way of working sounds like your kind of thing, I’d love to hear about your plans. Drop me a line with your date and venue and I’ll tell you straight away whether I’m free.
