The twelve at a glance
| Location | Borough | Best time | Permit | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greenwich Park and the Old Royal Naval College | Greenwich | Weekday, two hours before sunset | Yes: Royal Parks licence, plus separate College permission | Grand, classic, city-view portraits |
| St Dunstan-in-the-East | City of London | Weekday, 8–9am | Yes: City of London licence, about £294 per two hours | Green, romantic, ruined-church look |
| Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill | Camden | Weekday morning or last light | Yes: City of London licence, about £234 at the Pergola | Wild, unmanicured, skyline from the top |
| Little Venice and Regent’s Canal | Westminster | Late morning, weekday | No, for one photographer | Water, narrowboat colour, quiet |
| The Barbican highwalks | City of London | Sunday, any hour | Yes: the estate expects permission | Brutalist, architectural, weatherproof |
| Shoreditch and Columbia Road | Hackney and Tower Hamlets | Any day except Sunday | No | Colour, street art, modern and unfussy |
| Kew Gardens | Richmond upon Thames | Booked slot, spring or autumn | Yes: paid permit, outdoor gardens only, on top of admission | Botanical, blossom and autumn colour |
| Leadenhall Market | City of London | Sunday morning | Yes: City of London licence | Ornate Victorian roof, guaranteed dry |
| Sky Garden | City of London | Booked slot, weekday | Free ticket; professional shoots via their events team | Skyline views without a helicopter |
| Primrose Hill | Camden | Sunrise, honestly | Yes: Royal Parks licence, 10 working days | The postcard skyline |
| Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square | Camden | Winter dusk, around 4pm | Yes: private estate permission | Modern, lit, works in bad weather |
| Holland Park and the Kyoto Garden | Kensington and Chelsea | Weekday, first thing | Borough permission for commercial shoots | Small, lush, autumn colour |
Parks and green space
Greenwich Park is what I’d pick if a couple handed me a free choice. The avenue up to the Observatory, the view back across the Old Royal Naval College towards Canary Wharf, and enough room to be twenty metres from anybody else. Two catches. The hill is a genuine climb in a dress, and the College is separately managed with its own photography charges, so a Royal Parks licence does not cover the colonnades.
Hampstead Heath is unmanicured in a way the Royal Parks are not, which is exactly the appeal. Long grass, proper trees, and the Parliament Hill view over the whole city. It sits with the City of London Corporation rather than Royal Parks, and the Corporation runs its own paid licence scheme: around £234 for a two-hour permit at the Hill Garden and Pergola, weekdays only, with £5m of public liability cover required. It is also enormous and boggy from October, so choose your entrance and your footwear with care.
Holland Park hides the Kyoto Garden, which is lovely and roughly the size of a tennis court. Everybody knows about it. Go at nine on a weekday in late October or do not bother.
Kew Gardens has the strictest small print of the twelve. You buy a photography permit from Kew’s commercial media team on top of a paid admission ticket for everyone attending, and it covers the outdoor gardens only. Not the Palm House, not the Temperate House, not any other building, which is the opposite of what most couples assume when they pencil Kew in as a rain plan. No separate lighting, no standing on the beds. Cherry blossom in April and the arboretum in late October earn the paperwork.
Water and the canal
Little Venice through to Camden along the Regent’s Canal gives you narrowboats, low bridges and reflected light, and it costs nothing at all. The honest negative is the towpath: narrow, a serious commuter cycle route, and between eight and ten in the morning you are stepping aside every ninety seconds. Late morning calms right down. Do not attempt a veil anywhere near a bike lane.
Architecture and the City
St Dunstan-in-the-East deserves its reputation. Ruined walls, ivy, filtered green light. What it is not is free: the City of London licenses wedding, engagement and portrait shoots in its gardens at around £294 for up to two hours between 8am and 6pm, through the City’s film and photography team. It has also been closed to shoots for long stretches of maintenance, so check it is open before you build a day around it. By mid-morning at a weekend there are three photographers working around each other. Eight o’clock on a Tuesday and it is yours.
The Barbican is the best bad-weather location in London and my personal favourite. Concrete, water, those yellow-tiled highwalks and covered sections when it pours. The estate asks professional shoots to get permission and security are attentive, so sort it in advance rather than being escorted off the lakeside terrace.
Leadenhall Market is a working market on weekdays and unusable at lunchtime. On a Sunday morning it is empty, the shutters are down, light drops through the roof and it looks like a film set. It is City of London property too, so the same licence applies as at St Dunstan’s. The floor is polished cobble. Warn whoever is in heels.
Sky Garden is where expectations meet reality. Entry is free but ticketed, slots go quickly, tripods are banned, and the glass throws reflections into everything unless you work tight against it. Turning up on a general public ticket with two cameras and a couple in wedding clothes gets you a polite conversation with staff. Professional shoots go through their events team and are chargeable.
Modern London
Shoreditch and Columbia Road are free, unregulated and change every few months as murals get painted over. That churn is a feature: your pictures will not look like everyone else’s from three years ago. Avoid Sunday, when Columbia Road is a flower market. A good chunk of my East London wedding work ends up here between ceremony and reception.
Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square come into their own in November and December, when it is dark by half four and the whole site is lit. It is a private estate with a photography policy, so ask first.
Primrose Hill gives you the skyline everybody wants, and at sunset in July there will be four hundred people on that slope with cans of something. Sunrise is the answer. It is a Royal Park, so a paid photographer needs a permit.
Permits and money, plainly
The rule most couples miss is that none of this hinges on tripods or camera size. If you are paying the person taking the pictures, managed spaces call it commercial photography.
- The Royal Parks license wedding and lifestyle photography. Budget roughly £250 to £490 plus VAT for a small group at recent published rates, carry £5m of public liability cover, and get the paperwork in with about ten working days to spare.
- City of London spaces, including St Dunstan-in-the-East, Leadenhall Market and the Square Mile gardens, license wedding and portrait shoots at around £294 for two hours. Hampstead Heath is City of London too: roughly £234 for two hours at the Hill Garden and Pergola, weekdays only.
- Kew Gardens sells a permit on top of admission for everyone attending, with fixed time slots, covering the outdoor gardens and nothing indoors.
- Private estates such as King’s Cross, Battersea Power Station and the Barbican grant permission case by case, often free for a short couple shoot if you ask early.
- Genuinely free: public streets such as Shoreditch and Columbia Road, the Regent’s Canal towpath (the Canal & River Trust’s policy targets crews and towpath closures, not one photographer), and ordinary borough park land.
Every figure here is approximate and gets reissued, usually each January, so check with the landowner before you book. And an honest caveat: enforcement is patchy. Plenty of couples have been photographed in Royal Parks and City gardens with no licence and nobody said a word. That does not make the fee imaginary. In ten years I have been asked to stop twice.
The ones I’d talk you out of
Notting Hill’s pastel terraces are private homes and residents have plainly had enough. Several streets now carry signs asking photographers to move along, and I don’t blame them. Millennium Bridge with St Paul’s behind it is a lovely idea and a tourist conveyor belt in practice. I would also skip a drone for almost any central London couple shoot, because the airspace makes it a paperwork exercise.
The pairing I’d choose
On the wedding day itself: one location, ten minutes from your venue, twenty-five minutes of shooting. That is genuinely it. Couples who plan three stops lose an hour of their own party and arrive at dinner flustered and cold. If you want the full location set, do it as a separate pre-wedding shoot on a weekday, when the parks are empty.
My default pairing for a Central London wedding is the Barbican for weatherproofing plus St Dunstan-in-the-East first thing with the licence bought; for the east it is Columbia Road and the canal, which costs nothing. Details of how I work are on the wedding photography page, and the contact page is the fastest way to check whether a date is free.