The loudest, best kind of day at Boyne Hill House

Mary and Mike told us early that their wedding was not going to be traditional. No receiving line, no long list of formal group shots, no part of the day where everybody stood still and waited. We hear that fairly often and it usually means the couple is nervous about the day feeling stiff. In their case they meant it, and Boyne Hill turned out to be exactly the right building for it.

The venue is a restored Georgian house and courtyard outside Navan, hired on an exclusive basis, so the whole property belongs to your guests for the day. That matters more for a lively wedding than a quiet one. Nobody is being asked to keep the noise down, and the courtyard means people spill outside naturally instead of bottlenecking in a corridor.

A venue you can be loud in is a genuinely different thing to film.

The courtyard is the heart of it

Most country houses give you a lawn. Boyne Hill gives you an enclosed courtyard, and it changes the shape of the day. People gather rather than scatter, which means conversations happen in groups instead of pairs, and the sound of a wedding in a courtyard is completely different to the sound of one on an open field. For a film that is a real gift. The energy is audible.

It also solves the Irish weather problem better than an open space does. There is shelter close by at every point, so a shower moves people ten steps rather than ending the outdoor part of your day.

How a livelier wedding films

There is a myth that a relaxed, informal wedding is harder to film than a formal one. The opposite is true. A structured day gives us a predictable set of moments and very little in between. A day like Mary and Mike's gives us almost nothing predictable and an enormous amount in between, and the in between is what people actually rewatch.

What it does require is a filmmaker who is not waiting for a cue. We shoot on long lenses from a distance for exactly this reason, so we can follow something that starts across the room without walking into the middle of it.

If it is your venue

• Do not over plan the middle of the day. The gap between the ceremony and dinner is where this venue earns its money. Leave it loose.
• Skip the long group shot list. Pick the handful that genuinely matter to your families. Every extra one costs you fifteen minutes of the atmosphere you are paying for.
• Warn us about the characters. Tell us who is going to make a speech nobody expects, or who will be first up dancing. We will be pointed the right way before it happens.
• Use the courtyard after dark. Late evening out there, with the noise of the party behind you, gives us some of the best closing footage of any venue in Meath.

Mary said afterwards that they had not wanted the usual posed shots, and that what they got back was the real thing: the energy, the laughter, and the love from their family and friends. That is the whole brief for a wedding like theirs, and Boyne Hill made it easy to deliver.

Their full review is here if you want to read it.