Real Weddings

blush love. a romantic wedding in yorkshire – sam & neil

Julia Braime

a romantic wedding at Carlton Towers (c) Yorkshire Portraits

Well, well, well. Aren’t things looking pretty around here this morning?

Not to ignore the

rather gorgeous

 elephant in the room, we’re going to talk more about our new look later on (have a good look around, you’ll find some snazzy new interactive features to have a play with) but for now, it’s straight into the wedding watching.

Don’t know about you, but I’ve missed our daily fix of lovely whilst we’ve been redecorating these pages, and I just couldn’t wait. This morning we’re joining Brides Up North reader Sam and her husband Neil for their romantic real wedding in Yorkshire.

a romantic wedding at Carlton Towers (c) Yorkshire Portraits

Sam says:

We got engaged on 15th September 2012.

Neil and I were getting ready to go the St Leger races in Doncaster and before we went Neil suggested that we go to the Lakeside to have some photos taken as we were all dressed up. It was a beautiful sunny day and when we got there Neil got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!

We got married on 24th February 2014.  It was very important to us to have a church ceremony and for this we chose St Mary’s Catholic Church in Selby. Our reception venue was Carlton Towers. It was the first venue we went to look at and we immediately knew that it was where we wanted to have our reception.

We would highly recommend Carlton Towers as a wedding venue. Nothing was ever too much trouble and the day ran without a hitch.

a romantic wedding at Carlton Towers (c) Yorkshire Portraits

We tried to choose things that would look timeless and elegant. My dress was lace so I took some inspiration from this when choosing other items.

We used a palette of ivory, grey, pink and deep plum colours. When we met our florist she advised us to choose colours which toned in with the bridesmaids dresses as picking out the plum colour in the flowers could have made everything look quite gothic and we wanted a more classic, vintage style.

We hired a number of items from Beau Ideal Weddings to use at Carlton Towers including chair covers with ivory satin sashes, crystal candelabras for the guest tables and lots of pots of flowers and candles. We also hired a huge ornate silver mirror and easel for our table plan and an old-fashioned postbox which was dressed with gypsophila.

There were so many extra touches we added to make our wedding personal to us. Neil designed all of our wedding stationery and I made the invitations with the help of his mum. I liked the idea of using some old sheet music which my grandfather’s had given me in the wedding somewhere, so a friend made them into confetti cones for me. I made a display of old family wedding photos to display on top of the piano in the reception venue and we named our reception tables after wedding anniversaries. We designed and made our own guest book out of photographs that our photographer had taken on our engagement shoot. We also made the playlist for our wedding breakfast and included lots of our favourite songs. A family friend and wedding guest provided our evening reception food – a hog roast and lots of tasty desserts.

a romantic wedding at Carlton Towers (c) Yorkshire Portraits

My dress was by Justin Alexander and I bought it from Georgian House Bridal in Doncaster. I knew when I went shopping for a wedding dress I didn’t want a strapless dress and knew that I liked lace.This dress was the first I tried on and the moment I put it on it felt right and I knew it was the dress for me! I wore a vintage style hair comb in my hair and my veil had some lace embellishments to tie in with my dress.

I carried a bouquet of faith, amnesia, memory lane, avalanche and vendela roses, brunia, eucalyptus, pink wax flower and ornithogalum which was designed by Emma-Victoria at Beau Ideal Weddings.

Neil wore a traditional navy morning suit with a pale grey pin-stripe waistcoat and plum coloured cravat to match the bridesmaid’s dresses. This was hired from Georgian House Bridal.

The bridesmaids wore deep plum coloured maxi dresses with grey faux fur shrugs. Both were from Debut at Debenhams.

a romantic wedding at Carlton Towers (c) Yorkshire Portraits

Our photographer was Phil Shillitoe from Yorkshire Portraits. Phil was superb on the day. He was very discrete and a creative photographer who enjoyed capturing the finer details. We are both really pleased with the photographs and would highly recommend him to other brides and grooms!

I am a music teacher and music is very important to both of us. We had lots of friends who offered to play for us throughout the day. During the ceremony we had a string quartet which included two of my work colleagues. In the drinks reception another work colleague played the piano. In the evening we hired the Danny Maddocks Band who played a mixture of pop, rock and mo-town songs. They had everyone dancing all night long. Our first dance was ‘Got to get you into my life’ by the Beatles and two of our friends and wedding guests got up to play the horn parts which made it extra special.

a romantic wedding at Carlton Towers (c) Yorkshire Portraits

There were so many special moments but the two that stand out are during the wedding breakfast, Neil and I were chatting to each other at the top table watching our guests eating their food, chatting and laughing, our favourite music was playing and the room was lit by candlelight. It’s such a rare thing to have all of your family and friends together in the same room at the same time and knowing they were there for us was quite overwhelming. Our other favourite moment was stepping out of church together holding hands as man and wife into the glorious sunshine.

We went to Reykjavik in Iceland for a 3 night mini-moon where we visited Gulfos waterfalls, the blue lagoon and even managed to see the elusive Northern Lights. We plan on going on a two week honeymoon to the Maldives and Dubai over Christmas and New Year.

My top tip for other Brides Up North would be to consider getting married out of peak season. Having a wedding in February is considerably cheaper than having a wedding in the summer and you will have much more scope to negotiate with all of your suppliers which could save you lots of money!

the big picture

 

join the northern revolution

Would you like to see your real wedding, love story, styled shoot, forthcoming event or wedding business featured on Brides Up North? Contact Brides Up North for real wedding and features submissions or details of our sponsorship packages.

Contact us to be featured on Brides Up North

comments

  • Kate
    July 29, 2014 | Permalink | Reply

    What a fabulous sparkly website full of fantastic inspiration Love the new look.

have your say

Your email is never shared. Required fields are marked *