Iyan & Richard: A Cotswolds Elopement in Castle Combe and Malmesbury

Iyan and Richard eloped. No guest list, no seating plan, no speeches. Just the two of them, a bouquet of pink calla lilies, and a day spent wandering two of the oldest towns in Wiltshire: Castle Combe in the morning, Malmesbury in the afternoon.

I’ll admit to a soft spot for elopements. All the bits of a wedding I like best, the quiet looks, the walking, the being somewhere and noticing it, with none of the logistics that usually crowd them out.

Castle Combe

Castle Combe is the village that ends up on the front of every Cotswolds calendar: one main street of honey-coloured cottages running down to a stone bridge over the By Brook, with wooded hills on both sides. It has been used as a film set more times than anyone can keep track of, and on a weekday morning you can still find stretches of it with nobody else in shot.

We started early, which is the only sensible way to do Castle Combe. By late morning the coaches arrive, and the street that looked like a painting at eight o’clock looks like a car park at eleven.

Mostly I asked them to walk. Up the street, down the street, across the bridge, back again. It’s the simplest direction there is, and it works, because people stop thinking about how they look when they’re thinking about where they’re going.

Malmesbury

Later we drove north to Malmesbury, a hilltop town above the Avon that claims to be the oldest borough in England. The abbey sits at the top: a huge Norman church that was much bigger still before the Reformation, and is still very much a working parish church today.

The abbey’s carved porch and old stone walls make a backdrop that needs very little help. I mostly kept out of the way and let the scale of the place do the work.

Then down through the town’s back streets, and out into the water meadows at the bottom of the hill, where you can turn round and see the whole town stacked up above you.

If you’re thinking about eloping in the Cotswolds

Go early: The famous villages, Castle Combe in particular, are busy from mid-morning. An early start gets you the streets to yourselves and the softest light of the day.

Pick two places, not five: Two locations with time to wander beats a checklist of every pretty village. You want to spend the day being there, not driving.

Sort the legal bit separately: In England you can do the legal ceremony quietly at a register office and keep the day itself for what matters to you. Plenty of couples do.

Wear shoes you can walk in: Cotswold streets are steep and uneven, and you’ll cover more ground than you expect.

There’s more about my work around here on my Cotswolds wedding photographer page. If you’re thinking of something small, my As Long As You Need collection is built for exactly this, and the Lookbook has the details.

No guests, no schedule, and two towns that have seen a few weddings before.