Real Wedding: A Grand Ceremony at Ely Cathedral

Ely Cathedral: A Grand Affair in the Fens

Ely Cathedral rises out of the flat Cambridgeshire Fenland like a ship on a calm sea — visible from twenty miles away across the open landscape, enormous and ancient and entirely unhurried. To be married in it is to be married in one of England's great medieval buildings. The nave is 75 metres long. The lantern tower, built in the 14th century to replace the Norman tower that collapsed, floods the crossing with light from its eight stained-glass windows.

Catherine and Michael had both grown up in the diocese and had attended services in the Cathedral since childhood. The decision to marry there was made twenty years before either of them met the other, in the sense that both of them had always known it was where they wanted to be married. They were simply waiting to find the right person.

The Scale of the Cathedral

Photographing Ely Cathedral presents a specific challenge: scale. The building is so large that the human figures within it risk being dwarfed and lost. The approach is to embrace this — to use the architecture as a deliberate compositional element that communicates the weight and grandeur of the occasion — and then to counterbalance it with close, intimate portraits that restore the human scale.

The wide-angle establishing shots — the couple at the crossing beneath the lantern, the congregation filling the first third of the nave — tell one story. The close portraits in the north transept, lit by the afternoon sun through the medieval glass, tell another. Both are necessary.

The Lantern Tower Light

The Octagon Lantern Tower at Ely is the most technically interesting element for photographers. From beneath the crossing, the light sources are high and directional, coming from eight narrow windows roughly thirty metres above the floor. The quality of light at the crossing at midday is extraordinary — bright, even, and coming from above like a theatrical spot.

The ceremony, held in the choir stalls rather than the main nave, used the choir's own intimate proportions and the candlelight from the choir stalls to excellent effect.

The City and the Reception

After the ceremony and the formal family portraits on the cathedral green, the wedding party moved a short distance through Ely's medieval streets to the Almonry Restaurant — a Norman undercroft that provides wedding receptions in one of the most atmospherically distinctive rooms in East Anglia.

Candles, stone walls, low arched ceilings, and long tables: the Almonry is a setting where the photographer's job is mostly about not getting in the way of what the room already provides.