Oheka Castle Weddings on Long Island

Oheka Castle is the second-largest private home ever built in the United States, and it does not let you forget it. A hundred and twenty-seven rooms. More than a hundred thousand square feet. Formal gardens laid out by the Olmsted Brothers, hedges clipped into an allée that runs away from the house like a corridor with no ceiling. Most venues you have to work to make interesting. Here the problem is the opposite — the building will happily eat your wedding if you let it.

Rachel and Ian were married here on March 20, 2026, black tie, 220 guests, with a golden doodle named Riley in a tuxedo of his own. It is the clearest example I have of how to photograph this place: use the architecture, then get close enough that the people still win.

What Oheka Castle Actually Is

Otto Hermann Kahn built it between 1914 and 1919 on the highest point on Long Island, in Huntington. Delano & Aldrich did the house — Chateauesque, French in its bones. The Olmsted Brothers did the grounds, including the formal sunken garden with its clipped hedges, parterres and water terraces. At its height the estate ran to 443 acres with its own golf course. It is the largest private home in New York State and the second largest in the country.

It is now a 32-room hotel as well as an event venue, which matters more than it sounds: you can get ready upstairs, photograph all day on the property, and nobody has to get in a car. For a March wedding with a 6pm ceremony, that is the whole ballgame.

Rachel & Ian — A March Wedding at Oheka

Getting Ready, and a First Look on the Grounds

Rachel got ready in one of the castle’s suites, her gown hanging against the panelling in the kind of window light you cannot buy. Then a first look outside — the ivy wall, the bronze statue in the courtyard, the cobblestones. In March the ivy is bare enough to read as texture rather than colour, which is why so many of these frames work in black and white.

The Staircase

If Oheka has one signature, this is it. A double curve of iron and stone under a chandelier, banked with white florals and candles. We shot it four different ways and I would happily have shot it four more. Riley came along for one of them.

The Ketubah and the Ceremony

The ketubah was signed at a quarter to five in one of the library rooms, with the gardens going grey-blue in the windows behind. The ceremony followed at six under a chuppah wrapped in greenery and a tallit. The room Oheka uses for ceremonies has enough height to take a floral arch without it looking small, and enough windows that a 6pm March ceremony still had daylight in it.

The Reception

Two hundred and twenty people, a first dance under the ballroom chandelier, and a hora that put Rachel over the crowd. She changed for the back half of the night, which is worth planning for — the second dress is usually when the dancing pictures get good.

Photographing a Wedding at Oheka Castle: What I Tell Couples

Give the grounds real time. The archway, the hedge allée, the sunken garden, the ivy wall, the courtyard statue — those are five completely different backdrops and they are all a short walk apart. Sixty to ninety minutes outside gets you all of them. Thirty minutes gets you one.

Book a room. Getting ready on site is the single biggest timeline saver at Oheka, and the suites have better light than most bridal rooms in the state.

March is underrated. Bare hedges, low grey light, no crowds on the grounds, and a castle that was designed for exactly this weather. If your date is flexible and your budget is not, the off-season here photographs beautifully.

The building is a co-star, not the star. The temptation at Oheka is to shoot the architecture and place people in it. It should be the other way round. Wide frames to establish, then get close.

The Vendor Team

We photograph weddings across Long Island, Manhattan, Westchester and New Jersey — see more Jewish weddings in New York, other Long Island venues, or our Manhattan venue guides. Planning a wedding at Oheka? Tell us your date.