More and more London couples are splitting their wedding day across multiple venues — a ceremony in one place, dinner somewhere intimate, then a change of scene for drinks and dancing. What nobody really tells you is what the bits in between actually look like. Arjanne and Marcus married at Islington Town Hall that afternoon, with a different photographer covering the ceremony itself — but when they asked if I'd document the second half of their day, moving their party from dinner at Trullo in Islington to drinks at Kioku Sake Bar in Whitehall by tube, with a change at Highbury & Islington, I said yes without hesitating. It turned out to be one of my favourite hours of documentary wedding photography I've shot all year.
Two Private Rooms, One London Evening
Both venues were hired privately just for the wedding party — dinner at Trullo, then a livelier second act downstairs at Kioku's Sake Bar, near Trafalgar Square. Trullo is one of Islington's most loved Italian restaurants, and for good reason — the pasta is rolled fresh minutes before it reaches the table, and the kitchen runs on a charcoal grill and a menu that changes with the seasons. It's the kind of unpretentious, genuinely excellent cooking that's earned it a following well beyond Islington. Kioku's Sake Bar, tucked into the ground floor of the Old War Office on Whitehall, does something you don't see often in London: an entire bar built around sake, with cocktails crafted from it rather than treated as an afterthought. Upstairs, the main restaurant looks out over Westminster and Trafalgar Square — but it was the cosy, low-lit bar downstairs where the party actually landed. Two completely different kinds of authentic, back to back, in one evening — that's a genuinely lovely way to structure a day: two distinct moods, two distinct rooms, without needing one venue to try to be everything at once. But it does raise a practical question every couple considering this route asks — how do you actually get everyone from A to B without losing the thread of the evening?
For Arjanne and Marcus, the answer was refreshingly simple: the London Underground.
What the Journey Actually Looked Like
I won't pretend a wedding party moving through a Tube station is subtle. It isn't. And that's exactly what made it wonderful to photograph. There's something about a bride in a veil and a groom in a white dinner jacket waiting under the departures board that stops other passengers in their tracks — and the reactions on the platform were half the story.
We had a change at Highbury & Islington, which meant a proper walk through the tunnels, an escalator, and a wait on the platform with the rest of the wedding party trailing behind in black tie. Somewhere in the middle of it, completely unprompted, Arjanne and Marcus stopped and kissed on the escalator. Nobody staged that. Nobody could have.
That's really the whole argument for documentary wedding photography in one moment — it's not something I could have directed better than the day directed itself. If you're curious what that approach actually looks like in practice, beyond this one story, I've written more about what documentary wedding photography means and how it differs from a more posed, traditional style.
By the time we surfaced into Trafalgar Square, the whole group was laughing, slightly windswept, and very much still in wedding-day mode — past a double-decker Great British Tea Bus, past tourists doing a visible double-take, and on to Kioku for the second half of the night.
Should You Consider Public Transport Between Venues?
Based on this one genuinely brilliant evening, here's what I'd say to a couple weighing it up:
It works best with a short, simple route. One change, a journey under 20 minutes, and venues close enough that nobody's trekking across London in heels.
Brief your wedding party in advance. Arjanne and Marcus's guests knew the plan, so nobody was caught off guard fumbling for an Oyster card in full black tie.
Let it be part of the story, not a logistics problem to hide. The moments that happen in transit — a stranger's reaction, an unplanned kiss, the group spilling out of a station together — often end up being some of the most honest images from the whole day.
Have a backup plan for weather and timing. London Underground doesn't wait for wedding schedules, so build in a little slack either side.
A Real, Unscripted Wedding Day
What I loved most about photographing Arjanne and Marcus's evening is that it never once felt like a shoot. It felt like two people getting married, surrounded by people who love them, moving through their own city on their way to the next celebration. That's the whole point of documentary photography — capturing what's actually happening, not what's been arranged to look good.
If that kind of honest, unposed storytelling is what you want from your own wedding photos, get in touch — I'd love to hear about your plans, wherever your day takes you. And if you'd like to see more of this kind of real London wedding coverage, you can browse more of my wedding galleries here.
