Woodlands Lodge Hotel

The rooms at Woodlands Lodge are dark and busy in the best way, floral wallpaper, a gilt mirror, a staircase, so your morning shots have some depth to them instead of a white wall. That’s why we’d book it in winter. We shot this one with the hotel dressed for Christmas, trees and wreaths and greenery, and the place takes all of that easily. The ceremony room has a big bay window, so the vows shoot on daylight even in January. Outside there’s an archway cut clean through the conifer hedge, and that one gap does more for your portraits than the whole Hampshire lawn does. It frames a bride on her own or the two of you together against solid dark green, which is what you want when the rest of the garden is bare, and it works in December as well as June. Dinner goes in the conservatory under a glass roof and draped swags, bright by day and close by night. The lawn in front of the white facade takes the whole group at once.