If you want a small wedding, most venues will sell you a small version of a big one. Ryedale is built the other way round. It caps at 58 guests, and it does elopements, handfastings and vow renewals as readily as it does a wedding day.
You can marry in the thatched 16th-century manor house, in the Iron Age roundhouse, or, if you are eloping, in the Undertaker's Office. I have not photographed one in the Undertaker's Office yet. I would like to.
"There is a photograph of Sam as a boy, working the village water pump. We took it again, with him pumping water for his wife."
The VenueWhat Ryedale gives a photographer
- iTwenty-odd buildings, all different. Thatch, stone, timber, a black barn, an iron-age roundhouse and a red fairground wagon. Most venues give you one look. This gives you a dozen inside six acres, so an hour's walking covers more ground than a whole day at a hotel.
- iiThe village outside the gate. Hutton-le-Hole is stone cottages across a wide green, inside the North York Moors National Park. Step out of the museum and it carries on.
- iiiSmall is the point, not the compromise. 58 maximum. Sam and Sarah had fewer than twenty, one long table, and afternoon tea on slate boards.
- ivThree ways to get married. The manor house, the roundhouse or the Undertaker's Office. Ask them which suits what you actually want, because the answers are genuinely different.
A Real Ryedale DaySam & Sarah, spring
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Under twenty people
Sun out, light breeze, daffodils up. Ceremony in the manor house, which at that size feels like the room was built for it, because it more or less was.
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The water pump
Then the one I will remember. There is a photograph of Sam as a small boy working the village pump. We found it, set it up again, and this time he pumped the water for his wife. You cannot plan that into a shot list. You can only ask couples enough questions to find out it exists.
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Through the museum
Round the buildings and the exhibits, and out to the fences with the sky doing the rest.
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One long table
Back in for afternoon tea, sandwiches and cakes on slate, under a barn window hand-painted with local place names. A room this size is a different job for a photographer, and a much better one.
"Ask your photographer what he wants to know about you. The best frame from this wedding came out of a conversation, not a location."
PricingA day at Ryedale Folk Museum
A full day of Ryedale Folk Museum wedding photography starts from £1,800, with no travel charge anywhere in Yorkshire. Small weddings and elopements often do not need a full day, and the shorter options are on the pricing page.
LocationsWhere the day happened
Venue: Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole. Sam and Sarah's suppliers weren't recorded at the time, so the list stops where I can stand behind it.
