The Great Barn Wedding Photographer & Videographer

A Cotswold stone barn on the Cartwright Estate

The Great Barn is at Upper Aynho Grounds, Aynho (OX17 3AY), on the border of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. The venue gives its postal address as Aynho, Banbury, Oxfordshire, calls itself a Northamptonshire wedding venue elsewhere on its site, and books its registrars through West Northamptonshire. It says the barn was built in 1770 as part of the Cartwright Estate, with walls of Cotswold stone two feet thick, exposed oak beams and high ceilings, within a 250-acre farming estate.

We photographed Adele and Dom's wedding here on 10 July 2021 and Rosie and Mark's on 26 March 2022, and the two days are the ones in this guide: a ceremony room with stone walls and a first-floor gallery, petals on the steps, a footbridge over still water and a low evening sun. Our Northamptonshire guide and Oxfordshire guide show more weddings around the barn, and our Warwickshire guide covers the county just to the north. Here we stay with the barn. What we say about the buildings comes from the venue's own website, and what we say about the photographs comes from looking at them.

For current venue details, explore The Great Barn. The venue lists a number of rules, from the confetti it allows to its midnight finish, so ask for its current terms before you plan the details of your day.

01 / The spaces / From the venue's own description

The ceremony rooms, the two barns and the grounds

The venue says it is licensed for civil ceremonies, civil partnerships and naming ceremonies, and that couples can marry indoors, in the Garden Room or the Cart Shed, or outdoors in the gardens. It gives each indoor ceremony room as holding up to 120 guests. For the day itself it names the Croughton Barn, which seats up to 120 for the wedding breakfast, and the Aynho Barn, which holds up to 175 for the evening and can serve drinks at the reception.

The venue offers exclusive use of the whole site, a dressing room open to you, your party and your suppliers from 9am, and three cottages across the courtyard that sleep up to 10 guests with a continental breakfast. Its terms say catering is in-house only, with no outside caterers, and that photographers may use indoor and outdoor areas. Our photographs here do not tell us which ceremony room each couple used, so ask the venue which one suits your numbers.

02 / July 2021 / Adele and Dom

Adele and Dom: a ceremony in the stone barn, petals on the steps and a grass path under the trees

Adele and Dom married on 10 July 2021. They kiss at the front of a ceremony room with stone walls and a first-floor gallery behind them, Adele in a lace gown and veil and Dom in a blue-grey tweed suit, guests seated on both sides and some still wearing face masks.

At the signing table they lean towards each other and laugh, a bouquet of white flowers in front of them and a carved wooden chair beside the stone wall. Outside, they come down a short flight of stone steps as guests throw petals, Adele holding her bouquet and Dom with his hand in his waistcoat.

Afterwards the two of them stand by a stone wall hung with a trained climbing plant, Adele with a bouquet of white roses, and later sit close together on the back seat of a cream vintage car.

On a mown grass path between trees, Dom cups Adele's face as her veil and skirt trail behind her. The next frame is closer, the two of them kissing among soft green leaves.

Later, under a white canopy among the guests, Adele laughs with her arm around Dom's shoulders.

03 / March 2022 / Rosie and Mark

Rosie and Mark: a sunlit ceremony room, a footbridge over still water and sparklers at night

Rosie and Mark married on 26 March 2022. The photograph at the top of this page shows them walking hand in hand through a shower of petals between lines of cheering guests, Rosie in a lace-sleeved gown with a bouquet and Mark in a brown tweed suit with a floral bow tie. Earlier, before anyone has arrived, sun comes through tall windows onto rows of cream chairs, white drapes and fairy lights in the stone-walled ceremony room.

In the ceremony itself they kiss at the front of that room while the seated guests clap, with the gallery and a wooden door behind them.

Out in the grounds the trees were still bare. Rosie and Mark cross a wooden footbridge above still water with reeds behind them, and then stand forehead to forehead beside a weathered post and rail fence, her bouquet held low.

As the sun dropped they walked out onto the grass. In one frame they hold hands and smile at each other beneath the bare trees. In the next, the sun glows behind Mark's head as he kisses Rosie on the forehead.

After dark, guests line up with sparklers outside a timber-framed porch while Rosie and Mark kiss between them. Inside, Mark turns Rosie by the hand in their first dance on a wooden floor, with guests watching and filming beside a stone wall.

Planning your photographs at The Great Barn

The venue's own site answers a lot, and the rest is worth asking about. Here is how we would plan around it:

1. Ceremony timing: The venue says the registrar arrives 30 minutes early, that the ceremony runs about 30 minutes including the signing and that the registrar leaves straight afterwards. Plan a firm ready-by time for the morning and tell us what it is, so the getting-ready photographs finish before the room fills.
2. Confetti and sparklers: Both of these days had a lively moment outside with petals or sparklers. The venue allows only dried natural flower petals or lavender, and only outdoors, and bans fireworks, Chinese lanterns and real flames. Sparklers were not on the pages we read, so ask before you buy any.
3. Getting ready: The dressing room opens at 9am for you, your party and your suppliers. The cottages are for staying the night, with check-in at 4pm, so ask the venue where each of you can be ready and how the morning flows.
4. Season and light: Adele and Dom's portraits were under summer leaves, while Rosie and Mark had bare trees and low sun in March. We check sunrise and sunset for your date and shape the portrait plan with you around it.
5. Group photographs: We usually suggest about 15 groups, which take around 20 minutes. Write the list with someone who knows every face, and agree a spot with space, with a sheltered fallback in case the weather turns.
6. Portraits: We usually take a portrait walk of about 15 minutes, photo and video together. Here that could mean a grass path, a stone wall or a footbridge, and the venue says its grounds include trees that work as backdrops.

One team for the photographs and the film

Cam and Beth are one team, so the photographer and the filmmaker plan the same ceremony, the same portrait walk and the same evening. You give the venue one set of supplier details and get one conversation about the timings of a day that runs from 9am to a midnight finish.

The photo and video team package carries a £120 deposit and a £400 saving over booking photography and videography separately. We are based near Cardiff, and travel across England and Wales is included in standard full-day packages. When the drive is over two hours we always stay in a hotel the night before and cover it.

Questions about a The Great Barn wedding