Wedding Photographer in Cheltenham
Relaxed, documentary photography of your full wedding day in Cheltenham, from the first look to the last song, with a calm presence throughout.
★★★★★ Rated 4.8 from 580+ reviews
Wedding photography from £750
Bespoke packages · fast response · free consultation
The short answer
Your wedding photographer in Cheltenham, at a glance
An award-winning, London-based wedding photographer, Kaushik Bathia has spent more than 25 years photographing weddings and travels to Cheltenham and right across Gloucestershire. With a second photographer booked, speeches are covered from two angles, one on the speaker and one on the top table, and wedding coverage starts from £750. Cheltenham Register Office is on the first floor of its building on St Georges Road, and licensed venues around the town include the Pittville Pump Room, Ellenborough Park and Cowley Manor, so whether yours is a register office, church, country house or multicultural day, we plan around the room it happens in. That experience keeps us composed when timings tighten or the weather turns. For couple portraits, Pittville Park has an ornamental bridge at each end of the lake beside the Pump Room. An engagement shoot, a second photographer and hand finished albums can be added, and for a Gloucestershire wedding we travel from Northwood, with travel and any overnight stay quoted in writing before you book.
Regency architecture is a gift and a trap. The Grade I listed Pittville Pump Room gives colonnades and pale stone that bounce light back into faces beautifully, but that same stone goes flat and grey under a dull sky, so plan the couple portraits for the brightest part of the afternoon. The Pump Room overlooks the eastern side of Pittville Park, and Montpellier Gardens, part of the town's Regency landscape close to the centre, is the alternative closer in. Ellenborough Park, Manor by the Lake, Cowley Manor and No.38 The Park each sit in their own setting, so the venue choice largely decides how far the group photographs have to travel. Some guests will come by train to Cheltenham Spa station on Queens Road and others by road from Prestbury, Winchcombe or Tewkesbury, so they arrive by very different routes and rarely all at once.
Kaushik was exceptional at creating our wedding photo album! He designed it so beautifully and his customer service was the best. The album quality and design is amazing, we loved it! Wow what a great job. Highly recommend for photo albums.
A brilliant photographer who also provides a great service - a true professional! Highly recommended for sure...
A superb and highly professional wedding photographer. Throughout the registry and wedding ceremonies Kaushik Bathia took beautiful photographs ensuring he captured all the special moments. His friendly personality put everyone at ease and his unique ideas resulted in some wonderful family pictures which we will treasure forever.
Serving Cheltenham
Choosing a Cheltenham ceremony room with the photographs in mind
Your ceremony room is chosen by a licence, and licences hold no opinion about windows. That is worth absorbing before falling for a building. Find out which room the licence names, not the one the brochure photographs. You can end up legally married in the dimmest space on the premises, at an hour you did not pick, with the seating already fixed. None of that is fatal. It simply means the good photographs get made in the hour afterwards, not during.
Older Cheltenham rooms complicate it further, because a long narrow room seats people in rows facing one end, which leaves a single aisle to work from and gives half the guests a view of shoulders and hair. Two questions solve most of it. How many chairs are actually going in, and can the back row come out? Ask both at the viewing, while you still have leverage.
Check your date
Every kind of wedding
The short ceremony and the long day around it
The binding bit is brief. Fifteen minutes often covers it, which surprises couples who have spent a year planning around it. So the schedule that matters is everything bracketing it: the arrival, the speeches, the noise in between and a first dance to close. We build our timings around those and treat the ceremony itself as a fixed point, photographed from wherever the registrar says we may stand. Registrars hold their own view on where a camera may be while vows are said, which is a question we put to them on arrival rather than assume.
Group shots are the point at which days come apart, and the fix is unglamorous. It needs a written list, ten lines at most, and somebody loud who can put a name to everyone on it. Without that person we are calling names into a marquee and losing twenty minutes nobody budgeted for. A receiving line does some of the same work if you would rather. Whatever you choose, do it before the crowd disperses, because they scatter faster than anyone expects.
Why choose us
What experience changes on a wedding day
Years behind the camera teach you where to stand when something unplanned starts, and that is most of what experience buys. We have seen enough speeches to know the laugh comes before the punchline lands. We are not learning your day while it happens, so we are free to watch it properly instead.
A local guide for couples marrying in Cheltenham
Here are some places in and around Cheltenham that a wedding day could involve, from ceremony rooms to open spaces for portraits. Details come from the linked sources and can change, so check them before you book. We travel from Northwood; travel and any overnight stay are quoted in writing before you book.
- Pittville Park lake bridges. The Gloucestershire Registration Service notes that Pittville Park offers settings for photographs, with an ornamental bridge at each end of the lake beside the Pump Room. 1
- Montpellier Gardens, close to the town centre, are an important part of Cheltenham's Regency landscape, with a small arboretum of interesting and unusual trees in the north-western corner, and hold a Green Flag Award. 2
- Cheltenham Register Office, run by Gloucestershire County Council's registration service, is on the first floor of its building on St Georges Road, Cheltenham GL50 3EW. 3
- Pittville Pump Room. The Grade I listed Pittville Pump Room, opened in 1830 in Pittville Park and ringed on three sides by an Ionic colonnade, is licensed for ceremonies, with a Main Hall for 310 guests. 4
Sources
Coverage and booking
What your wedding photography in Cheltenham includes
What's included
- Wedding photography from £750, priced for the events you choose
- Coverage of the ceremony, the family groups, your couple portraits and the reception
- A pre-wedding planning meeting to agree the timings and the family groups that matter most
- A second photographer available for the largest celebrations
- An edited private online gallery to share and download
- Hand-finished albums and wall art as an option
How booking works
- Check your date. Call or WhatsApp 07956 505383, or use the enquiry form on this page.
- Free consultation. In the studio, by phone or over video, with sample albums to look through.
- Written quote. The events, the hours and any album, with travel from Northwood set out in writing before you book.
- Confirm the booking. A simple booking agreement holds your date in the diary.
- After the day. Your edited gallery arrives online, followed by any album you have chosen.
Good to know
Wedding photography in Cheltenham, frequently asked questions
Talk to us first. Where the new date is open we simply move everything across, no penalty and no fuss. Where it is not, we would rather find you somebody good than sit on a deposit for a date we cannot cover.
Only as far as you need. Most people want a place to begin rather than posing, so we give you something simple to do and then step back. Ten minutes in and you will have stopped noticing us.
We do, from the studio in Northwood. Travel to Gloucestershire and any overnight stay are quoted in writing before you book, and an early start is simply planned into the day.
Both, and the choice is made frame by frame. Black and white earns its place where colour is fighting the picture, which on a wedding day usually means mixed lighting, a dark room, or a moment where the emotion is the only subject.
Yes, and sooner helps more than later does. Send a draft running order over and back it comes marked up: where the light will sit, which gaps will not stretch, and where half an hour moved earlier buys far better portraits.
More in Cheltenham
More wedding & photography services in Cheltenham
See also Asian wedding photography, Hindu wedding photography, Sikh wedding photography and Muslim wedding photography, and nearby our wedding photography overview, all the areas we serve, Gloucester and Worcester.
Guides
Wedding guides for Cheltenham couples
Portfolio
From our wedding portfolio
Marrying elsewhere in Gloucestershire? See wedding photography across Gloucestershire, with register offices, venues and every town.
Popular sessions
Before the day, many couples book a pre-wedding or engagement shoot near Cheltenham, which also helps everyone relax in front of the camera.
Church · Civil · Country House · Marquee · Multicultural
Planning a wedding in Cheltenham?
Tell us about your celebration and we will send availability, ideas and pricing, wherever it takes place.