Wedding Photographer Cardiff — Cardiff Castle, Bute Park and the Vale of Glamorgan
Cardiff is the capital city of Wales — a Victorian boomtown built on coal export wealth, with a concentration of Gothic Revival and Edwardian civic architecture in its city centre that is among the most intense in Britain. Cardiff Castle, rebuilt by the third Marquess of Bute and William Burges in an extraordinary Victorian Gothic fantasy style from the 1860s onwards, is the most dramatically photogenic building in the Welsh capital and available for wedding ceremonies and receptions. Castell Coch, Burges’s even more flamboyant fairy-tale castle on the hill above the Taff valley north of Cardiff, is available through Cadw for smaller wedding ceremonies. As a Cardiff wedding photographer, I cover the full range of city venues and the surrounding Vale of Glamorgan and Brecon Beacons countryside.
Cardiff’s Victorian Architecture and Civic Venues
Cardiff’s Victorian civic centre — the Cathays Park development of civic buildings around Alexandra Gardens — contains the City Hall, the National Museum of Wales and the Welsh Government buildings in a formal Beaux Arts complex of Portland stone that provides an exceptional formal backdrop for wedding portraits in the city centre. Bute Park, occupying the castle grounds along the River Taff, provides parkland, arboretum and riverside walks immediately adjacent to the city’s Victorian architectural core. The Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square — where the world’s first million-pound cheque was written in 1839 — is now the Coal Exchange Hotel and provides a Grade I listed event space of remarkable Victorian commercial opulence.
The Vale of Glamorgan and Brecon Beacons
South of Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan provides a gentle, pastoral landscape of estate farmland, Glamorgan Heritage Coast cliff walking and the beaches of Barry Island and Llantwit Major. St Donat’s Castle on the Heritage Coast — a genuine medieval castle converted into an arts centre and events venue — is one of Wales’s most atmospheric wedding settings. North of the city, the Brecon Beacons National Park begins within thirty minutes of Cardiff at the Taff Fechan upper valley, providing wild Welsh mountain scenery dramatically different from the city. For couples wanting both urban sophistication and wild Welsh landscape in a single wedding day, Cardiff’s location on this geographical boundary gives it a unique range of photographic options.