Winchester Registry OfficE
Winchester Registry Office is a very regular fixture on my wedding photography calendar. It’s a hugely popular venue for a marriage ceremony and for very good reason. Just a quick glance at the building that plays host to it, and the surrounding Castle area of the town, and you can see that it really does have something unique amongst the county’s wealth of registry offices. The beauty of the outside continues once you enter the ceremony rooms, with a choice on offer depending on the size of your wedding and your tastes: the richer, classical feel of the upstairs Castle Room, or the quirkier and more intimate Basing Room – the original ceremony room in the building. I really love any day as a Winchester Registry Office wedding photographer – with so many superb options in and around town to continue your celebrations it’s prove time and again to be the most wonderful springboard to so many fabulous occasions.
Perched up on Castle Hill at the top end of Winchester, right next to the Great Hall and King Arthur’s round table, the Registry Office occupies an absolutely gorgeous stone and flint building which sits right on top of the ancient castle, dating wayyyyy back to when Winchester was the capital of England. (Check out the cool tunnels which run underneath for a very cool and slightly alternative wedding photo).
There are several ceremony rooms ranging from the tiny (the smallest wedding I photographed here had me as attendee number five, after the bride, groom and obligatory couple of witnesses) right up to the largest, upstairs in the Castle Room which looks out over the Great Hall. The other ceremony room of note is of course the gorgeous Basing Room , which the whole service was built around really when they relocated here from their previous home by the station. There can’t be another ceremony room like it in any registry office up and down the country. Its rather unconventional shape works really well, as it naturally turns all the guests in towards the bride and groom. And the wallpaper, carpeting and of course enormous chandelier are something else; the word opulent was possibly created just so that I can describe this space.
The whole Registry Office building is stuffed full of excellent photo opportunities; stone-walled corridors, staircases, doorways, wood panelling… love it, love it, love it! I love Winchester as a city too, naturally, and one of my favourite things after so many of my Winchester Registry Office weddings is to take the couple and quite often their guests too on little photowalk through the old backstreets in the direction of their reception venue. I know this place pretty well!
It’s a rare luxury to have such a stunning venue for a Registry Office. Absolutely beautiful inside and out, it photographs like a dream. No wonder so many couples travel from far and wide, even from outside the county of Hampshire, just to make use of it Absolutely stunning for every size and shape of wedding. Lucky, lucky me!