Updown Farm House Wedding Photographer

Richard & Mel — a very good day in Deal, Kent

There are wedding venues that are beautiful in a very obvious, wedding-venue sort of way.

Then there’s Updown Farmhouse.

Tucked away in the Kent countryside just outside Deal, Updown somehow manages to be properly beautiful without feeling like it was built specifically for people to get married in. Which, as a Kent wedding photographer, is exactly my kind of place.

It’s old brick, rambling gardens, slightly wild corners, beautiful rooms, excellent food and enough personality that you don’t need to throw a load of wedding styling at it. It feels like a house, a restaurant, a farm and a really good party destination all at once.

And now I can officially say that I’m an Updown Farmhouse recommended supplier, which is particularly nice given that I’m no longer just passing through Kent for weddings.

I actually live here.

From London work home to Kent life

For years I’ve considered London my “work home”. Most of the weddings I photograph are in London, and I still spend a huge amount of my working life there — photographing city weddings, pub weddings, warehouse weddings, tiny weddings, big weddings and all the wonderfully strange stuff in between.

But a couple of years ago, I moved to Margate.

Life by the sea. Slightly more breathing room. A bit more salt in the air.

So photographing a wedding at Updown Farmhouse, a short-ish hop across Kent from home, feels particularly good. I get to photograph a brilliant wedding at one of the most exciting wedding venues in Kent, then go back to the seaside afterwards.

Not a bad setup.

And if you're looking for a Kent wedding photographer, a Deal wedding photographer, or an Updown Farmhouse wedding photographer, I'm increasingly finding myself right in the middle of exactly that world.

Richard & Mel at Updown Farmhouse

Richard and Mel's wedding was fun from the beginning.

The sort of day where people are properly invested in what is happening around them. Where the ceremony isn't something everyone politely sits through before getting to the drinks. Where the speeches have people laughing so hard they're crying, and then occasionally crying for an entirely different reason.

And, because apparently a normal wedding ceremony wasn't quite enough, there was a Kylie sing-along.

In the ceremony.

Which is a pretty good indication of the tone for the rest of the day.

This is one of the things I love about documentary wedding photography. The best bits are rarely the things you could have planned into a Pinterest board.

They're the split seconds.

The look someone gives their mate during a speech.

The person trying very hard not to laugh during the ceremony.

Someone absolutely losing it in the background.

The hug that lasts longer than expected.

The moment after everyone has stopped listening to the speeches because they're laughing too much.

The slightly chaotic dancefloor.

The tiny things that nobody thought to put on the running order.

That's the stuff I'm looking for.

A wedding venue that speaks for itself

Updown Farmhouse is one of those places where you can basically turn up with a bunch of people you love and let the place do its thing.

The setting is gorgeous without being overly manicured. The 17th-century farmhouse, gardens, brickwork and surrounding countryside give you loads to work with photographically, but it doesn't feel like you're walking around a backdrop.

It feels lived in.

And then there's the food.

Which deserves its own paragraph.

Actually, several.

Updown isn't just a wedding venue with decent food attached. Food is a serious part of what makes Updown Updown. The restaurant is currently in the SquareMeal UK Top 100 Restaurants for 2026, sitting at number 17, and the venue has also been recognised by the Michelin Guide.

The restaurant sits in a conservatory surrounded by the grounds, with grapevines overhead and an open kitchen where the cooking happens over wood. The menus are small and hyper-seasonal, with local and European produce changing regularly.

So if you're the sort of person who thinks wedding food should actually be good — rather than just technically edible after six months of planning — Updown is a pretty compelling option.

And Richard and Mel's guests seemed to agree.

Documentary wedding photography at Updown

My approach to wedding photography is pretty simple.

I'm there to photograph what actually happens.

Not manufacture it.

Not spend half the day arranging everyone into increasingly elaborate formations.

Not interrupt a good conversation because I need a photograph of someone holding a glass at exactly 45 degrees.

I shoot weddings in a documentary wedding photography style, combining digital photography with 35mm analogue film and, where it suits the day, other film formats.

That means lots of observation.

Lots of movement.

Lots of photographs of people doing things rather than photographs of people standing around being photographed.

At a venue like Updown, that approach makes particular sense. There are so many different spaces and little pockets of activity that the day naturally gives you a visual rhythm.