Jane & John – A Private Garden Wedding Party in the Surrey Hills
Jane & John are the High Priest & Priestess of exceptionally good parties. They celebrated their marriage with a private garden wedding party at their beautiful home in the Surrey Hills and it was an absolute riot.
Wedding vs Wedding Party
Most of my commissions these days are weddings, but every now and then I get to shoot a bona fide wedding party. That’s to say, a party in celebration of a wedding, minus the actual ceremony, which invariably took place on an earlier date. For a documentary photographer, there’s something wonderfully pure about a wedding party. There’s typically little in the way of timeline pressure and loads of opportunity for unstructured celebration. Most documentary wedding photographers are people watchers at heart, and this sort of gig scratches that itch magnificently.
It’s Not About The Cameras
I met Jane & John in their stunning Surrey Hills garden a few weeks beforehand. I always find it useful to get a sense of people, in person, ahead of the day. It’s a common fiction that most of what a wedding photographer does is about cameras. In my experience, it’s about people and places. Getting to know your subjects, understanding how they speak, move, interact (alone and with each other), what makes them tick, and how they think, is infinitely more valuable in the making of great images than any camera. I take the same cameras to every wedding – I know them inside out and understand how to get the best out of them. But the subjects and settings – the people and places – change with every shoot. That’s why I really like to meet all my clients face-to-face and have a good nose around their locations.
It Belongs In A Museum!
On seeing their gorgeous garden, my first thought was a quiet ‘wow’ and, on meeting Jane & John, my initial reaction was ‘is that Harrison Ford?!’. Come on, I can’t have been the first person to think it! You would be hard pressed to find a more welcoming and charming couple. Shooting for these guys was a real pleasure. They knew what they wanted and it lined up perfectly with the way I like to shoot.
The structure of the day was pretty straightforward. An afternoon of cocktails and delicious small plates, a little music and a few speeches, a quick moment for confetti and then an evening of music and dancing. Good parties thrive on simple things – interesting people paired with good music, great food and a well-stocked bar. The weather cooperated perfectly and what had been envisioned played out perfectly.
Old Friends
It was fantastic to finally work with Chloe van Beever of Thyme & Lime catering. Chloe’s a really old family friend and despite circling the same part of the wedding world for years, we’d somehow not crossed paths professionally. It was amazing to see her and the team do their thing at long last! As you’ll see, their food is to die for. Not only does it look utterly delicious, it punches BIG on the flavour front. Seriously, some of the best wedding food I’ve ever encountered. I cannot look at the photos of the gyros and small plates without turning into the salivating emoji. I never recommend people unless I truly rate them (even when they’re old family friends) so I’m glad it was amazing otherwise this paragraph would have turned into an awkward tumbleweed of silence!
Deadhead Confetti
What do you do when you want to have confetti, you’re hosting a hundred guests and have a rose garden sitting nearby? If you’re Jane & John you ask your guests to earn their keep and deadhead the roses. This is honestly the best way of engineering a confetti moment I’ve ever seen. Organic in every sense of the word! It was a right giggle and made for something that felt way more inclusive and fun that simply lining them up and passing round a basket of petals.
Seven Minute Portraits
John was really clear with me that he didn’t want to devote loads of time to portraits. When I suggested ten minutes his response was “how about seven?” 🤣 As a man who knows what he likes, I can respect that in others, especially when it’s delivered with infinite charm by one of the friendliest guys I’ve ever met. So we did about seven minutes and it was gold.
After speeches on the lawn, we headed into the tent. The first half of the evening was looked after by Dave Dean who channeled his inner Andy Williams. Jane & John’s crowd LOVE House of Bamboo so this went down a storm. I hadn’t seen This City is Ours when I covered this one, but I have since and it now makes perfect sense! To follow, Ollie Moore from Farnham Sound & Light took over the DJ duties and kept things hopping late into the night.
Private Garden Weddings in the Surrey Hills
This is one of those days where the photographs say it all. So let’s leave it there and get into the images. Thanks to Jane & John for throwing an incredible party and inviting me to shoot it, and to Chloe and her team for feeding me some of the more irresistible plates of food I can remember. I loved every second of this superb summer’s day. If you’re hosting a private garden wedding in the Surrey Hills – or anywhere else for that matter – get in touch, I cannot think of much I’d rather photograph! If you’d like to see more weddings like this one, take a look at my archive of Private Home Weddings.
