Hawkwell House Hotel

There’s a tree in the Oxfordshire garden at Hawkwell House with fairy lights strung right through it, and standing under it at dusk is the frame we’d protect. It’s warm, it’s a few steps from the door, and it costs you about four minutes. The whole site works like that. Three acres in Iffley means everything from the ceremony to the last portrait sits within a short walk, and nobody spends the day trailing down corridors. You marry in a light neutral room with French doors onto the garden and an exposed stone wall behind, which takes colour and uplighting later without fighting it. Outside there are old brick and stone garden walls, mature trees, open lawn and a balustraded terrace under parasols, so you get four or five distinct backdrops without leaving the grounds. Autumn is the date to chase if you can, because those trees turn and the lawn fills with colour. Then the entrance is lit, and the two of you standing in it closes the day off neatly.