A Wonderful Rustic Barn Wedding Venue in the Oxfordshire Countryside

As Oxfordshire Wedding Photographers, we get to photograph weddings at some wonderful venues across the county. As we often get asked by couples for recommendations for places to get married across Oxfordshire, we thought it would useful to run a regular feature on venues we have worked at and can whole heartedly recommend. 

It didn't take a lot of thought to come up with our first recommended venue! Lains Barn, near Wantage, is a place we know well, and love to work at. Unusually for us, we also also a preferred supplier there (we don't normally look for such agreements, as we look to photograph in a variety of places.) A restored barn dating from the 18th century, Lains is ideally placed for Oxford and South Oxfordshire weddings, and is only an hour by train or car from London. 

Why do we like working at Lains? Well, firstly, its a lovely place. The main ceremony room has lovely directional light coming from the side windows and doors, and also a small balcony at the back, ideal for Samantha to photograph the wedding ceremony from behind. The bar area is long but quiet narrow, and lends itself well to our kind of documentary wedding photography, in that groups naturally mix and interact, giving us ample opportunities for candids.  

The main lawn and grounds are always well kept, with cars parked at a higher level overlooking the lawn. This helps of course for positioning group and couple portraits (yes, we WILL do some on request....) There is also a short walk up to another small barn or outhouse type of building (Sorry if that isn't the best term, Lains!), which is also a nice backdrop for couple portraits. 

Just as importantly, however, the team there are GREAT.  They are efficient without being bossy, and, with regards to us as photographers, they are wonderful. They totally "get" our style of photography, and never try and organise us, tell us where "the best places for photos are", or hector us to take more group photos so they can  have more time to move things around! 

We always look forward to our weddings at Lains, whether photographing a whole ceremony there, or just the reception/wedding breakfast.  

You can see several weddings we have photographed at Lains Barn on our wedding photography blog. 

If you are looking for a wedding venue in Oxfordshire, we would heartedly recommend Lains Barn. If you haven't booked a wedding photographer yet for Lains, we would love to hear from you.  You can contact us here.