Hendall Manor Barn Wedding
If you’re getting married at Hendall Manor Barn, this is some great inspo for your wedding – with some creative and unique portrait ideas too.
Hendall Manor Barn is a wedding venue just outside Uckfield, only 45 minutes from Brighton, and has a proper Mediterranean vibe, with the huge lawn and big skies.
It’s run by Nic and Peter, who also live there (dream home alert!). They’re a lovely pair who help out when needed and take a back seat when not needed. They’ll also welcome you for a visit if you want to pop over and have a look around.
The venue is down a long track miles from anywhere – it’s so peaceful. It’s great all year round too, with the lawn for summer weddings and underfloor heating in the barn for winter weddings.
We love shooting weddings at Hendall, mostly because it’s fab for photos, but also because we live 15 minutes away on the other side of Uckfield!
Our fave things about Hendall:
- The lawn is huge and perfect for lawn games
- It’s all in one place – prep, ceremony, and party
- There are fab photo ops (we love the car barn – read on!)
- It’s run like clockwork so you don’t have to worry about anything on the day
- There’s a kitchen where you can hide away and make a cuppa if it all gets too much!
Details about weddings at Hendall Manor Barn
Boring but useful to know is that there’s parking (in a very photogenic barn! You’ll see later!) and loads of outside space. Also, it’s near Ashdown Forest, which is a fab spot just to visit for walks – and a great place to get fresh air the morning after your wedding.
There’s no confetti allowed at Hendall – but that’s ok because bubbles are EPIC for “confetti” photos! The key: lots of them, and no wind!
Accommodation at Hendall
You can also stay over the night before and after, as there’s all sorts of fab group accommodation on site – which makes it loads easier for us to shoot your getting ready photos too, as there’s no driving in between venues and missing anything.
Wedding ceremonies at Hendall
The barn is a cosy place for a wedding ceremony, with a long aisle to walk down (plus a room at the back to do your registrar interview and have a drink before heading down the aisle!). The barn has two big windows/doors either side of where guests sit, which means there’s some good light, but down the end of the aisle it’s a bit darker, so if you wanted beautiful light for your ceremony, you could consider turning it around 90 degrees and entering through the back door.
This is one of the windows/doors that you could turn the ceremony towards:
Photo ops at Hendall Manor Barn
The scenery outside the venue walls is epic, and there are fields all around for wedding photos. Plus, you’re allowed to use the private gardens for small group photos and portraits, where there’s also a cute swing and a gorgeous pond.
It sounds weird, but we just LOVE the car park barn at Hendall! It’s a super cool space that looks like a normal barn but if you angle it just right, you can take really cool portraits in there.
As wedding photographers, we love a venue that gives us lots to play with. And Hendall delivers! There’s even a field you can go in that at certain times of year has hay bales for cool photos. There’s also an orchard just beyond the pond, which is fab for photos.
For the big group photo of all your guests, there’s a staircase leading outside from the barn, which allows for some height for the photo – you can see this in the photo below. And in summer it’s the only shady spot at lunchtime!
There is the private garden, but only smaller groups of photos can be taken there, to preserve Nic and Peter’s private gardens.
The reception and dinner
For the reception there’s a huge lawn and terrace with an outdoor bar. While you’re playing lawn games and having GnTs the ceremony room will get decorated for the dinner. And after dinner it turns into a dancefloor!
For dinner, I have to mention to the epic Green Fig Catering. They work a lot at Hendall so they know their way around, and they make SUCH delicious food. Plus they feed photographers well so we love them even more for that – photographer fuel is important!
There a big black curtains and shutters in the main room so if you’re starting the party while it’s still light out it feels cosy on the dancefloor.
