Wedding Photographer Bijou Wedding Venues — Intimate Exclusive-Use Houses across the Home Counties
Bijou Wedding Venues is a collection of intimate, exclusive-use boutique wedding venues across the Home Counties — a group whose properties include Notley Abbey (a former Augustinian priory), Great Fosters (a Grade I listed Elizabethan manor in Surrey), the Alexander House Hotel in West Sussex and several smaller exclusive-use country houses each available for private two-day exclusive events. The Bijou group’s philosophy of complete exclusivity — no other weddings on the same day, no public rooms, no other guests — creates a wedding photography environment of unusual intimacy and flexibility where every space in the building and grounds is available throughout the day without restriction. For Bijou Wedding Venues photography, I adapt my approach to the specific character of each individual property.
Notley Abbey, Great Fosters and the Bijou Portfolio
Notley Abbey near Thame — the former Augustinian priory whose surviving medieval fabric includes a thirteenth-century chapter house and the prior’s lodging converted into reception rooms — provides a portrait setting of medieval monastic character available at only a handful of English venues. Great Fosters near Egham in Surrey is a Grade I listed Elizabethan manor of 1550 whose formal topiary gardens, moat bridge and Tudor chimneystack landscape provide portrait settings of extraordinary Elizabethan character within Surrey’s landscape. Each Bijou venue has its own specific landscape and architectural character, and I advise couples on the full photographic resource of whichever property they have chosen following an initial consultation.
The Bijou Approach to Exclusive-Use Photography
Exclusive-use venues provide a specific freedom in wedding photography that shared-use venues cannot: the ability to use every room, every corridor and every garden space at any time of the day without navigating other guests, other photographers or venue staff restrictions on access. I work across all Bijou properties in a completely documentary style — the freedom of exclusive use means I can follow events wherever they lead without the spatial restrictions that venue-sharing imposes. For couples who value the full documentary record of a private, intimate and unhurried event, Bijou’s exclusive-use model and my documentary approach are directly complementary in a way that makes the photography both comprehensive and genuinely personal.