Thornton Manor offers complete luxury, with settings straight out of a period BBC drama and service unparalleled. There are a few options when it comes to getting married at Thornton Manor and the idea of this content is to give you a sense of the venue from a wedding photographer & videographers point of view. I have focused on three of the 4 options available at the venue, The Manor House, Lakeside Marquee and the Dell Pavilion. I have purposely left The Walled Garden Marquee out of this article as for us it's the least visited venue and usually caters for much larger events.
The Manor House
The first element to impress me about Thornton Manor is the parking situation. There are many venues which allow guests, suppliers and other visitors to park directly outside of the venue. This is fine if all your guests drive Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but when I pull up in my 2008 Nissan Micra with one missing hub cap and a Pink Floyd "Rule the Universe" bumper sticker it somewhat detracts from the glowing ambiance of the building! So when venues have dedicated parking out of view but close enough for guests to walk it is brilliant. Furthermore to this, Thornton Manor have crew parking at the rear of the building so you don't have to battle past the army of suppliers vehicles.
I joke about this but it truly is important, especially when it comes to the group photographs later in the wedding day. It's nice to be able to shoot the venue free of parked cars, giving us clean and unobscured images in a location we choose.