Looking for a Bodleian Library wedding videographer in Oxford? The Divinity School, finished in 1488, was the Hogwarts infirmary and appears in The Favourite. Convocation House for a smaller ceremony, drinks in the Old Schools Quad, confetti under the Bridge of Sighs.
The Bodleian is the University of Oxford's main research library and one of the oldest libraries in Europe. Weddings take place in the Old Bodleian, in the middle of the city, between the Radcliffe Camera and the Sheldonian.
The Divinity School is the room most couples come for. It was finished in 1488 and is the oldest and largest room in the Old Bodleian. The stone vaulted ceiling is covered in carved detail, and tall arched windows run down both sides. Convocation House, added in the 1630s, is smaller and darker. Wood panelling, tiered wooden seating and a stone fan-vaulted ceiling, a room that suits a more intimate ceremony. Drinks can be held in the Old Schools Quadrangle, enclosed by warm Oxford stone.
If any of it looks familiar, it should. The library has been on screen for decades. The Divinity School was the Hogwarts infirmary in the Harry Potter films. It also appears in The Favourite, Mary Queen of Scots and Transformers: The Last Knight. Convocation House was used in The Favourite too, and became the Royal Society in The Aeronaut. Upstairs, Duke Humfrey's Library was the Hogwarts library, the restricted section Harry creeps into under the invisibility cloak, and turns up again in My Oxford Year. The Old Schools Quadrangle has been in Wonka, His Dark Materials and Mary Queen of Scots. Inspector Morse, Lewis and Endeavour all filmed at the library too.
Duke Humfrey's isn't a wedding room, but it is worth asking the wedding team whether a visit or photographs there can be arranged. For some couples the film connection matters as much as anything else on the day, so ask early.
As a Bodleian Library wedding videographer, the first thing I notice is the light. It comes through the Divinity School windows in long shafts and lands on pale stone, so the room can look bright at midday and almost candlelit by late afternoon. Convocation House sits at the other end of the scale. Low light, deep wood, very little colour. Between the two you get a film with real range, all inside one building.
Then the city takes over. A couple of minutes' walk away, on New College Lane, is Hertford Bridge, better known as the Bridge of Sighs. Confetti under that bridge, with your guests filling the lane, is one of the best moments of a Bodleian wedding on film. Radcliffe Square and the lanes around it do the rest, with portraits a country venue can't give you.
This is a working university library, so filming comes with rules. Drones need permission from the university and shouldn't be assumed. I check what is allowed with the venue team well before the day.
If you are marrying at the Bodleian and want a film of the day, send me your date to check availability.
