Marybrooke Manor Wedding Photos
A 1940 mock-Tudor guesthouse on the edge of Sherbrooke Forest, with a chapel, a gazebo lawn and rooms upstairs
Marybrooke Manor is a National Trust-listed guesthouse and reception centre on Sherbrooke Road in Sherbrooke, about 30 km east of Melbourne in the Dandenong Ranges. Eric Dowdle built it in 1940 as the grandest of his six mountain guesthouses: four storeys, timber-framed, mock-Tudor, with a curved bedroom wing. It served as a children’s rest home during the war, ran the Baron of Beef restaurant from 1968 to 1988, and was renovated from 1992 into the hotel and wedding venue it is now.
We have photographed and filmed weddings at Marybrooke Manor. The eight-acre grounds sit right against Sherbrooke Forest, so ceremonies happen on the gazebo lawn under the canopy or in the indoor chapel with its fireplace and garden windows. There are 20 suites on site plus a cottage, which means the morning preparation, the ceremony, the portraits and the reception all happen without a car trip in between.
Photographing a wedding at Marybrooke Manor
The forest keeps the light soft and green for most of the day, so midday portraits work here when they would not elsewhere. The heritage drawing room is the spot for quiet frames if the mountain mist rolls in, and the chapel is the standing wet-weather plan. Sunset arrives early behind the ridge in winter, so we bring the couple session forward by half an hour. The Tudor front with its timber and gables reads best from the driveway side.