A Knotting Hill Place Wedding: Carly and Christopher
Carly and Christopher married at Knotting Hill Place in Little Elm on a January afternoon, a black-velvet, white-fur winter wedding at North Texas's French château.
Carly Larkin and Christopher Hudson married at Knotting Hill Place in Little Elm on the twenty-third of January, a late-afternoon ceremony with a reception that ran into the night. A January wedding in North Texas is a bet on light, and this one paid: cold, clear air, a low golden sun for portraits, and a château that photographs like Europe twenty minutes from Frisco.
The styling leaned into winter instead of fighting it. Christopher in black velvet, Carly in a layered ballgown with a white fur wrap, silver and crystal in the details, and a chapel lined with blossom trees. This is what the venue looks like when a couple lets the season do some of the design.
Getting Ready in the Château
The morning stayed inside the house, Christopher and his groomsmen in the shadowed light by the ironwork doors, Carly with her bridesmaids upstairs. The building gives you drama for free: silhouettes in the arched windows, and her train pooling down the steps of the balcony while her bridesmaids sat beneath it.
A First Look at the Ivy Arch
They saw each other at the venue's ivy-covered stone arch, and they brought letters. There is a particular quiet to a first look in January, no crowd on the grounds, no hum of a waiting cocktail hour yet, just the two of them reading, and then not needing the pages any more.
A Chapel Full of Blossom Trees
The ceremony began at a quarter to five in the venue's glass chapel, blossom trees in white and blush down both sides of the aisle, ghost chairs that keep the room feeling open, halo chandeliers overhead, and the wooden cross framed in the tall windows behind the altar.
Christopher walked in with his mother. Carly came down the aisle to him with the winter light going gold through the glass, and they were married by the time it left.
Golden Hour at the Colonnade
January's gift is a golden hour that starts at five. We took them across the grounds while the light dropped, the courtyard in full sun, the garden colonnade with the low sun burning through the trees behind it, and the château's stone facade as the sky went to dusk.
The staircase frame is the one the venue is famous for, and it earns it: the ironwork rail, the pale stone, and a train that finally gets a staircase long enough to hold it.
Velvet, Billiards, and a Champagne Tower
The reception filled the ballroom, and the couple used the whole house. Christopher poured the champagne tower himself. They stole ten minutes in the billiards room, her ballgown draped over the rail while she lined up a shot, and the father-daughter dance happened under the chandeliers with the room watching.
At the end of the night their guests lined the stone steps and sent them out through smoke and sparklers, which is about as cinematic as an exit gets.
Planning a Knotting Hill Place Wedding?
Knotting Hill Place is twenty minutes from our McKinney studio and we know its light well, the chapel's glass, the colonnade at golden hour, the staircase, and where the château glows after dark. Read our Knotting Hill Place venue guide, or our notes on planning a North Texas estate wedding.
See more Dallas-Fort Worth wedding photography, read how the investment works, or contact us to talk through your date.
